Friends lunch on the balcony of a riverside restaurant under a striped awning, around a white-clothed table crowded with bottles, glasses, fruit and grapes. At the left a woman in a flowered hat leans over to play with a small dog, a bearded man in a sleeveless undershirt and straw hat stands behind her, and another woman rests her chin on her hands on the railing. At the right a young man in a straw hat sits backward on his chair, and a man in a top hat stands at the back. The Phillips Collection says most of the models were friends of Pierre-Auguste Renoir and have been identified: his future wife Aline Charigot plays with her terrier at the left, the painter Gustave Caillebotte sits backward at the right, the actress Ellen Andrée drinks from a glass, and the banker Charles Ephrussi wears the top hat.

Renoir painted it in 1880–81, mostly on the balcony of the Fournaise restaurant in Chatou. No preparatory drawings are known; the museum's technical study shows Renoir worked straight on the canvas and reworked it repeatedly. Duncan Phillips bought it in 1923 and wrote that his gallery would own 'one of the greatest paintings in the world.' It is in the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC.