This painting exemplifies Caillebotte’s desire to produce truly modern art, expressing a new outlook on the world.

The artist chooses as his subject the new hobbies of the urban bourgeoisie, of which he is a part. A man, whose identity we do not know, is boating on the Yerres, the river that flows near the Caillebotte vacation property in the south-east of Paris. The painter proposes an original “immersive” framing which places the spectator in the boat and seeks to abolish the distance between the space of the painting and that of the viewer.

The composition – centered on this man who faces us but looks away – emerges from an energy, a feeling of assurance, but also of loneliness, characteristics of Caillebotte’s work. The sketched touch and the range of bluish tones evoke plein air painting, which increasingly appealed to the artist at this time.

Boat Party was one of the paintings sent by Caillebotte to the 4th exhibition of the impressionist group in 1879. The novelty of the point of view, combined with the banality of the subject, shocked even the most advanced critics, and led some to say that the young painter is a provocateur, that his paintings are not high art but a simple “photograph of reality” (Emile Zola). At this date, Caillebotte appears as the most radical artist of the movement.

https://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/artworks/partie-de-bateau-265643