PARIS.- On 25 November, auctioneer Christophe Joron-Derem, assisted by Pascal Perrin, art historian and consultant, will present for the first time at public auction a major work by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, depicting young Jean Renoir with his nanny, Gabrielle Renard.

Painted before 1910, this work has remained in the same family since its creation. It captures a tender, maternal scene and offers a rare glimpse into the childhood of the future filmmaker Jean Renoir (1894–1979), director of La Grande Illusion, The Rules of the Game and A Day in the Country.

Jean Renoir retained vivid memories of those moments with his father: “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.” Renoir could always rely on the active complicity of Gabrielle, who found ingenious ways to hold the young model’s attention.

Nanny to the Renoir children, Gabrielle Renard (1870–1959) was also one of the artist’s favourite models, appearing in nearly two hundred of his paintings. At sixteen, she entered the service of Aline Charigot, Renoir’s wife, and cared for the couple’s three sons for more than twenty years, becoming a second mother to them.

This moving work once belonged to Jeanne Baudot (1877– 1957), Renoir’s only pupil and a close friend, so much so that the artist set up his studio on her property in Louveciennes.

In 1895, Jeanne Baudot became Jean Renoir’s godmother, alongside his godfather Georges Durand-Ruel.

She kept the painting until it was passed to her spiritual son, Jean Griot, who served in General de Gaulle’s Cabinet during the war and later became a director at Le Figaro until 1975. He lived with Jeanne Baudot until her death in their house-studio at Louveciennes, where Renoir himself had once worked.

Jean Griot carefully preserved several works by Renoir inherited from Jeanne Baudot, including a portrait sold at Drouot in 2019 by the Christophe Joron-Derem study, and the present painting, The Child and His Toys – Gabrielle and the Artist’s Son, Jean.

The composition can be compared to the versions held in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, from the same provenance, and the Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris. However, the version to be offered at Drouot stands out for its more clearly defined toys and a richer, more detailed background, lending the scene a more intimate and vivid quality.

A devoted admirer of the work, Jean Griot—universal legatee of Marshal Joffre—hung the painting in his bedroom at La Châtaigneraie, Joffre’s former residence. He inherited two versions of The Child and His Toys – Gabrielle and the Artist’s Son, Jean: one now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington (since 1985), and the other to be offered for sale on 25 November at the Hôtel Drouot.