Woman in a rowboat

De Nittis's 'Woman in a Rowboat' of 1876 connects to a rich vein of nineteenth-century painting that celebrated aquatic leisure — boating on the Seine and its tributaries became one of the defining pleasures of the Parisian bourgeoisie and working class alike. The guinguettes and riverside restaurants at Argenteuil, Bougival, and Chatou attracted painters as varied as Monet, Renoir, Caillebotte, and De Nittis himself, all drawn to the particular combination of light on water, fashionable dress, and social pleasure that the riverbanks offered. Rowboats provided an intimate, relatively contained context for female subjects — the woman in the boat is at once free from domestic enclosure and contained within the small, defined space of the vessel. For De Nittis, the aquatic setting offered the challenge and pleasure of painting water reflections, the shimmer of light on the river surface, and the specific quality of light on or near water. 1876 was a productive year, with De Nittis increasingly confident in the outdoor light subjects that formed the most progressive aspect of his practice. His close friendship with Manet, who was also exploring outdoor and aquatic subjects at this period, provided important stimulus.

Water reflections challenged painters to capture constant movement in a fixed medium — De Nittis uses broken brushwork and varied impasto to suggest the shimmer of river light. The woman's figure provides a stable element against the mobile water and sky.