A Renoir painting that has been missing for a century sold for $2 million at an auction in Paris.
The painting, titled L’enfant et ses jouets – Gabrielle et le files de l’artiste, Jean (The Child and His Toys – Gabrielle and the son’s artist, Jean), depicts Renoir’s young son Jean playing with his nursemaid Gabrielle, the scene captured with palpable warmth. Created roughly around 1910, had never been published or exhibited, yet came to auction in remarkably good condition, requiring no restoration work.
Joron-Derem offered the work in its Tableaux Modernes sale at Hôtel Drouot in Paris on November 25. An international collector secured the work for a hammer price of €1.45 million ($1.68 million), as first reported by Artnet News. Buyer’s fees pushed the final price to about €1.8 million ($2 million).
The painting’s whereabouts remained a mystery until only recently. Renoir had originally gifted it to his pupil and close friend Jeanne Baudot, who became his son Jean’s godmother in 1895. She kept the work until her death, after which L’enfant et ses jouets passed to her adopted son and heir, Jean Griot. He hung the painting in his bedroom, where it stayed until his own passing in 2011.
Renoir produced several studies of Gabrielle and Jean painted around 1895–96, one of which is now held by the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris. Another iteration—also once owned by Griot—has belonged to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC since 1985.
In interviews, Jean Renoir, who would go on to become a feted film director, recalled tenderly his experiences being painted by the famed French Impressionist. “When I was very small, three, four or five years old, he didn’t choose the pose himself, but took advantage of some activity that seemed to keep me quiet,” he said. Jean died in 1979.
