A Renoir painting that had been missing for a century sold for $2 million at auction in Paris. The work, titled *L’enfant et ses jouets – Gabrielle et le fils de l’artiste, Jean* (circa 1910), depicts the artist’s young son Jean with his nursemaid Gabrielle. It had never been published or exhibited and was discovered in remarkably good condition. Auction house Joron-Derem offered the painting in its Tableaux Modernes sale at Hôtel Drouot on November 25, where an international collector secured it for a hammer price of €1.45 million ($1.68 million), with buyer’s fees bringing the total to about €1.8 million ($2 million). The painting had been gifted by Renoir to his pupil and close friend Jeanne Baudot, then passed to her adopted son Jean Griot, who kept it in his bedroom until his death in 2011.
This sale matters because it resolves a long-standing mystery in the art world—the whereabouts of a significant Renoir work that had eluded scholars and collectors for a century. The painting’s reappearance and strong auction result underscore the enduring demand for Impressionist masterpieces and the potential for rediscovered works to command high prices. It also sheds light on the intimate personal history of Renoir’s family, as his son Jean Renoir later became a celebrated film director and recalled fondly being painted by his father. The sale adds a new chapter to the provenance of Renoir’s studies of Gabrielle and Jean, with related works held by the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.