The rediscovered artwork, which depicts Jean Renoir with his nanny, Gabrielle Renard, had been held in private hands for many years
Ella Feldman - Daily Correspondent
December 3, 2025 2:30 p.m.
:focal(3000x2000:3001x2001)/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/04/e5/04e54b29-30f7-4269-b6c6-b47e639826a2/gettyimages-2241371630.jpg)
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), Pierre-Auguste Renoir, circa 1910 Lyvans Boolaky / Getty Images
A rediscovered Pierre-Auguste Renoir painting of the French artist’s son and nanny sold for $2 million at a Paris auction.
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) shows a young Jean Renoir sitting in the lap of his nursemaid, Gabrielle Renard, as they play with toys before lush green wallpaper.
The warm scene, painted around 1910, had never been exhibited or published before it came under the hammer at Joron-Derem’s Tableaux Modernes sale at the Hôtel Drouot in Paris on November 25. It came to auction in good condition, never requiring any restoration work.
“It’s a fantastic discovery,” auctioneer Christophe Joron-Derem tells Artnet’s Jo Lawson-Tancred.
An international buyer secured the painting for $1.68 million, which was within the work’s estimated price range. Including fees, the buyer paid around $2 million for the piece.
For a century, the painting’s existence was largely unknown to the public. Renoir originally gave it to Jeanne Baudot, a friend and student of the artist’s who became Jean’s godmother in 1895. Baudot passed the painting down to her son, Jean Griot, who hung it in his bedroom. Griot died in 2011.
Renoir made numerous studies of Jean and Renard. One belongs to the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris, while another—which Griot also once owned—has been at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. since 1985.
In the painting, “you can see that Jean is truly enjoying himself, and the painter is enjoying painting him,” Pascal Perrin, an art historian and consultant to Drouot, tells Artnet. “Renoir used light in a very special way.”
Renard, Jean’s nanny and his mother’s cousin, played a significant role in the boy’s childhood. When Jean was young, she took him to Guignol puppet shows in Montmartre. Jean, who went on to become a renowned filmmaker, later cited those puppet shows as influential to his career.
“She taught me to see the face behind the mask and the fraud behind the flourishes,” Jean wrote of Gabrielle in his 1974 memoir, My Life and My Films. “She taught me to detest the cliché.”
Grand Illusion' | Critics' Picks | The New York Times
Jean went on to direct films like La Grande Illusion (1937) and The Rules of the Game (1939), both of which are often cited as among the greatest films ever made. La Grande Illusion, which depicts a series of escape attempts by French prisoners of war during World War I, became the first foreign language film to receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture.
The film director recalled portrait sessions with his father fondly, per ARTnews’ Tessa Solomon. “When I was very small, 3, 4 or 5 years old, he didn’t choose the pose himself, but took advantage of some activity that seemed to keep me quiet,” he once said.
Comments(0)
Join the conversation and share your perspective.
Sign In to Comment