A previously unknown portrait by Auguste Renoir of his toddler son sold at auction in Paris for $2 million.
Painted sometime between 1890 and 1895 and gifted to a student, Child with Toys – Gabrielle and the Artist’s Son, Jean has never before been sold or exhibited. Pictured with his nanny — who “knows how to control the child so that Renoir can paint him,” the auctioneer told PBS — Jean Renoir would grow up to become a successful filmmaker, directing The Grand Illusion in 1937 and winning a Lifetime Achievement Academy Award in 1975.
A “masterclass of intimacy,” the portrait is in “exceptional condition,” the auctioneer added: “The last person to have touched it was probably Renoir himself.”