Child's Head

By 1906 Renoir was in his mid-sixties and had settled for good in the warm south of France, at Cagnes-sur-Mer near the Mediterranean. In those years children turn up everywhere in his work. His youngest son Claude, called Coco in the family and born in 1901, sat for him again and again, and so did the neighbourhood children who passed through the house. This small canvas, barely 30 centimetres tall, is one of those quick, close studies. The museum records it simply as a child's head, with no name attached to the face. Red was Renoir's favourite colour at this point, and it warms the skin and the shadows throughout the little picture. The handling stays loose and soft, the way he painted almost everything in these late years. The painting entered the Basel collection in 2019.