The entire body of Auguste Renoir’s work is not completely known. Proof of this is the painting “The Child and His Toys”, which sold on Tuesday for 1.8 million euros including auction fees at the Hôtel Drouot in Paris. It has never been exhibited or sold until now.
The canvas, painted shortly before 1910, represents his son, future filmmaker Jean Renoir, and his sitter, according to the auction house. “This painting represents everything one could want for a Renoir,” commented Pascal Perrin, art historian and painter specialist, when presenting the canvas.
A work offered to Jeanne Baudot
“The Child and Her Toys – Gabrielle and the Artist’s Son, Jean” shows the painter’s very young second son – who had five children –, the future director of “The Great Illusion” and “Party of the Countryside”, sitting on his nanny Gabrielle Renard’s knee, playing with figurines of people and animals.
It was always kept by the family of Jeanne Baudot, the friend and only pupil of the French master to whom he gave it. The woman who was also Jean Renoir’s godmother kept the painting until her death in 1957.
He bequeathed it to Jean Griot, the son of his housekeeper whom he considered his own and a resistance fighter who was part of General de Gaulle’s cabinet during the Second World War, and who directed Le Figaro in the 1970s. After his death in 2011, the painting was kept by his heirs.
“Perfect example of a painter’s skill”
The painting, estimated to be worth between 1 and 1.5 million euros, was acquired for 1.8 million euros by an “international buyer,” Drouot said.
Pascal Perrin underlines “the extraordinary condition of the work, which has not undergone any restoration”. The painting “is a perfect example of painterly mastery in full maturity,” he explained in the sales catalog. “We discovered all his love for intimate scenes, representations of a child, moments stolen throughout the afternoon from the heart of his family.”
It is “a masterpiece previously unknown to specialists, the public and the art market”, underlines in the catalog the auctioneer responsible for its sale, Christophe Joron-Derem.
Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) produced three versions of this scene. The other two are housed in the National Gallery of Art in Washington and the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris.
Auguste Renoir painted dozens of portraits of his children. Gabrielle Renard, who looked after them for some twenty years, was also one of his favorite models and appeared in almost 200 works.
