Unseen Renoir work resurfaces after a century and sells for 1.8 million euros

Renoir's "intimate masterpiece," unseen for over a century, sells for 1.8 million euros.
The painting "The Child and His Toys - Gabrielle and the Artist's Son, Jean" was perfectly preserved since it was painted before 1810.
EFE - A painting by Auguste Renoir, unseen in public for just over a century, depicting his own son Jean with his nanny Gabrielle Renard, sold Tuesday in Paris for 1.8 million euros (38.3 million Mexican pesos).

The work, titled "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), was valued between one and 1.5 million euros and is a "masterpiece" previously unknown to specialists, the public, and the art market, notes Christophe Joron-Derem in the Drouot auction house catalog.

Renoir (1841-1919) created three versions of the work featuring his son, who would later become a film director. The other two are held in the National Gallery of Art in Washington and the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris.

The painting, sold to an "international buyer," according to Drouot, had remained in private hands until now, kept by the same family. From One Jean to Another

Painted before 1910, it was first owned by Jeanne Baudot, a friend and the only student of the French master, to whom he gave it as a gift. She was the godmother of his son Jean and kept the canvas until her death in 1957.

Michèle Dassas, Jeanne Baudot's biographer, emphasized the importance of the relationship between Renoir and his student: "Jeanne Baudot was not only a disciple and confidante, but she also played a central role in the preservation of the work and in the transmission of the painter's legacy."

In her will, Baudot bequeathed the painting to Jean Griot, the son of her housekeeper, whom she considered her own and whom she adopted.

Jean Griot was a member of the French Resistance, served in General de Gaulle's cabinet during World War II, and directed the newspaper Le Figaro in the 1970s.

Griot kept the painting at his residence in Louveciennes (a suburb of Paris), the former property of the prominent World War I field marshal Joseph Joffre, until his death in 2011, when it passed to his heirs.

"The Boy and His Toys" by Renoir

"This painting represents everything one could wish for from a Renoir," commented Pascal Perrin, art historian and Renoir specialist, at the unveiling of the canvas last October.

In "The Boy and His Toys," Renoir depicts Jean—the second of the painter's five children—at a very young age. "The future director of films like 'Grand Illusion' and 'A Day in the Country,' sitting on the lap of his nanny, Gabrielle Renard, playing with dolls.

According to Pascal Perrin, "what is surprising is the quality of the work, its condition. After all these years, it has been perfectly preserved, absolutely without retouching. It is on its original canvas, and it is a true masterpiece of intimacy."

Perrin also highlighted the use of extended drying times, which demonstrate the painter's meticulousness and his concern for the work's durability.

Renoir painted dozens of portraits of his children. Gabrielle Renard, who cared for them for about twenty years, was also one of his favorite models and appears in almost two hundred of his works.

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