Gabrielle and Jean, Orangerie

Aline and Auguste Renoir had three sons, and they each became frequent subjects for the artist. Here Renoir focused on their second child, Jean, as he played with the children’s nursemaid, Gabrielle Renard, who also became one of Renoir’s favorite models. Renoir started by making numerous quick preparatory sketches of the pair, no doubt in search of a composition that would suitably capture the active, not-yet two-year-old child. The large charcoal study shows the pair almost cheek to cheek in a close embrace that Renoir modified only slightly in the painting, changing the position of Gabrielle’s arm while also adding some further definition to the toy cow the two are playing with so intently. But as the lack of finish in the lower portion of this canvas might indicate, Renoir was not done with the composition, and he modified it repeatedly over an extended period of time in a variety of different media. The red and black chalk drawing on view nearby may have been based on a tracing of a pastel version in which Gabrielle tilts her head back to look at Jean, and this configuration also appears in the large pastel that features the additional figure of a girl holding an apple. Renoir returned yet again to the image some seventeen years later, to make a fluidly brushed lithograph of the pair —which is also on view in this gallery—that recalls the soft, tactile quality of his earlier charcoal and pastel drawings, and again captures a sense of the warm, intimate connection between caregiver and child.