Retrato de Jean Renoir

The child here is Jean Renoir, the painter's second son, about seven years old. Renoir liked to keep his boys' hair long and let them run half-wild, and he painted them constantly. By 1901 he himself was in trouble: rheumatoid arthritis was stiffening his hands, and within a few years he would need brushes wedged between his swollen fingers. None of that strain shows in the soft, easy handling of the boy's face and hair. Jean grew up to become one of the great film directors, the man behind La Grande Illusion, and late in life he wrote a warm book about the father who kept painting him.