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Shown from about the waist up, a woman with pale, peachy skin and dark hair holds a blond, light-skinned child on her lap at a table as they play with several small toys in this horizontal painting. The portrait was painted with blended brushstrokes, giving the work a soft look. We look slightly down onto the pair, who are close to us as they nearly fill the composition. The woman sits at the far corner of the wooden table. Her black hair is pulled up and bangs frame her round face. She has rosy cheeks, a straight nose, and she smiles as she gazes down at the toy rooster she holds in her right hand, to our left. She wears a rose-pink, high necked garment with loose, long sleeves. Her other hand wraps around the torso of the child on her lap. The child faces our left in profile. Shaggy, strawberry-blond hair falls across his high forehead and down around the collar of his white shirt. He has a short, snub nose, flushed cheeks, and his coral-red lips are parted. He looks toward the toy rooster as he stands a doll up on the table with one hand. The doll has a white shirt, topaz-blue sash around the waist, and a red skirt, and three white sheep stand and lie on the table nearby. To our right, the wall behind the pair is patterned with loosely painted peachy-pink and white forms, presumably flowers, against a forest-green background. Vertical bands of smoke-gray to our left suggest drapes hanging from above. The artist signed the work in small red letters at the upper right corner: “Renoir.”

Auguste Renoir

Child with Toys - Gabrielle and the Artist's Son, Jean, 1895-1896

Not on View

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 54.3 x 65.4 cm (21 3/8 x 25 3/4 in.)

framed: 65.7 x 76.7 x 3.5 cm (25 7/8 x 30 3/16 x 1 3/8 in.)

Credit Line

Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

Accession Number

1985.64.36

Artists / Makers

Auguste Renoir (artist) French, 1841 - 1919

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
Read our full Open Access policy for images .

Inscription

upper right: renoir.

Provenance

From the artist in 1895 to Durand-Ruel; purchased from the Durand-Ruel family by (Sam Salz, New York); sold 1962 to Mr. Paul Mellon, Upperville, VA;[1] gift 1985 to NGA.

[1]Invoice from Sam Salz dated 4 May 1962 in NGA curatorial files.

Associated Names

Durand-Ruel et Cie
Mellon, Paul
Salz, Sam

Exhibition History

1900: Renoir Exhibition, Durand-Ruel Gallery, Paris, 1900

1928: Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris, 1928

1962: Artmobile II ("Twelve Portraits: Delacroix to Gauguin"), sponsored by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, 1962, no. 7

1962: Middleburg Community Center, Middleburg, VA, 22 September - 16 October 1962

1963: Loan for display at Vassar College Art Gallery, Poughkeepsie, May- June 1963.

1966: French Paintings from the Collections of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon and Mrs. Mellon Bruce, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1966, no. 107, repro

1997: Renoir's Portraits: Impressions of an Age, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; The Art Institute of Chicago; Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, 1997-1998, fig. 272, as Child with Toys (Gabrielle and Jean) (shown only in Fort Worth).

1999: Around Impressionism: French Paintings from the National Gallery of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1999, no cat.

1999: Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art, Washington, Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art; Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, 1999, no. 36, repro.

2005: Renoir, Renoir. Cinémathèque français, Paris, 2005, repro. p. 20.

2016: Renoir, Image of Women, Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art; Seoul Museum of Art; The Miyagi Museum of Art, Sendai, 2016-2017, no. 10, repro (shown only in Kyoto and Seoul).

Bibliography

1944: Drucker, Michel. Renoir. Paris, 1944:repro. 111.