Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s L’enfant et ses jouets – Gabrielle et le fils de l’artiste, Jean (The Child and His Toys – Gabrielle and the artist’s son, Jean) (ca. 1890–95) sold for €1.8 million ($2 million) at Drouot auction house in Paris on November 25th. This is the first time this work has been seen in 100 years.
L’enfant et ses jouets – Gabrielle et le fils de l’artiste, Jean depicts Renoir’s son Jean playing with toys with his maid Gabrielle. The painting, which was made sometime before 1910, was gifted to the French painter Jeanne Baudot, a student of the French Impressionist.
Baudot held on to the work, eventually passing it down to her adopted son and heir, Jean Griot, who, until his death in 2011, displayed the painting in his home.
Gabrielle Renard, the nanny to the Renoir children, appeared in nearly 200 of Renoir’s paintings, including The Artist’s Family (1896) and Gabrielle with Rose (1911). She was hired by Renoir’s wife, Aline Charigot, in 1886 and cared for the children, including Jean, for more than 30 years.
Jean Renoir was born in 1894, growing up to become a renowned film director. His films included The Grand Illusion (193) and The Rules of the Game (1939), which earned him a Lifetime Achievement Academy Award in 1975. The filmmaker died at 84 in 1979.
Renoir painted another portrait of Jean and Gabrielle in 1895–96. That painting, Gabrielle et Jean, is housed at the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris. There is another similar portrait held in the National Gallery of Art’s collection in Washington, D.C., also titled Child with Toys – Gabrielle and the Artist’s Son, Jean (1895–96).
Renoir’s current auction record was set by Au Moulin de la Galette (1876) at Sotheby’s New York in 1990, when it sold for $78.1 million.
