Portrait de Jean Renoir

The present work depicts Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s second son, Jean, at the age of four. Later established as a prominent and well-respected director of classic French films, the young Jean often sat for his father, who frequently relied on his children as models. Renoir was engaged with the possibilities afforded by portraiture at all stages of his prolific career, and was especially drawn to depictions of his children, seeking to capture their youthful exuberance, purity, and guilelessness in different mediums.
Renoir preferred to paint his children before their first haircuts, deftly capturing their locks as a way to heighten their state of innocence. Although long hair was the acceptable fashion for young boys at the time, much to Jean’s chagrin, the artist deferred the occasion of his haircut until his seventh birthday. Jean later wrote: “It may be remembered how my father insisted on my hair being kept long as a protection against blows or falls, and in addition, there was the increasing pleasure he took in painting it. As a consequence, I was still, at the age of seven, going about with my curly red locks” (Renoir, My Father, New York, 1958, p. 367).
In the present painting, Jean’s expressively depicted, long auburn tresses are adorned with a bow which dissolves into the bright layers of hair enveloping it. The delicate bow serves to accentuate the boy’s rounded rosy cheeks and lips, and the pale pink of his blouse. The work is both a warm and engaging portrait, as well as a study of corals, reds, and pinks, treated in Renoir’s characteristically luminous brushwork.