All in all it appears that as time went on Renoir painted each of his sons successively more feminized. There is also a correlation between how he treated his sons and how he painted them, from Pierre as a boy, to Jean, who was often painted as a “Jeanne”, to “Coco” as a favored child who was doted upon and for all intents and purposes was painted as a girl. There is something odd about the fact that the more Renoir was able to feminize his sons, the more attention he gave them. He only seemed interested in painting his sons when he could paint them as daughters. It is for this reason that Jean Drawing is such a rarity in Renoir’s portraits of his sons. It was the first portrait Renoir painted of Jean after his haircut, and one of the last portraits of Jean before Renoir’s obsession turned to the more easily feminized “Coco”. In this respect he let his obsession with all things feminine dictate the attention he gave his sons. These paintings do indeed tell a story about Reboir’s attentions towards and his relationships with his sons. Jean acknowledged that his father was not one given to physical or verbal displays of affection, and later concluded that his father showed his affection through painting (Bailey 224). Jean commented, “With sharp but tender touches of his brush, he would joyfully caress the dimples in his children’s cheeks or the little creases in their wrists and shout his love to the universe.” (qtd. Bailey 224) However, it was not the “cheeks” or “wrists” of his sons that captivated him the most, but their hair, which he painted with at least as much detail as any other aspect.
In the end the “love” with which Renoir painted his sons drove him to feminize them, and transform them into something they were not. Although there is the appearance of a content, loving father painting his children with great affection and love, there is something off about the fact that Renoir felt compelled to change the gender of his sons in his paintings to achieve this appearance. There is a world of difference between the dark, short, dull hair of Jean in Jean Drawing and the golden, long, and radient hair of “Coco” in Claude Playing. Perhaps this need for transformation was just another manifestation of Renoir’s fetish for women, which overcame even the lens through which he viewed his own sons. Renoir always felt more comfortable around women than men, even to the point of finding women’s voices soothing and men’s irritating. (Renoir 354). Perhaps Renoir painted his sons as girls as because he wanted to paint them as what he was comfortable with. This presents the question of whether or not Renoir truly did wish his sons were daughters, who would have been less of a threat to him and who would have made him feel more comfortable. Whatever the reason for Renoir’s need to transform his sons into the daughters they were not, it is clear that there was more to this man’s relationship with his children than just the “love” and “affection” critics so often assign to it. The “love” Renoir is credited with expressing by painting his sons could more accurately be termed obsession and dissatisfaction with presenting the boys as they really were. Only by understanding just how much of an aberration Jean Drawing actually is can the viewer realize just how peculiar Renoir’s feelings towards his sons, which drove him to transform their appearance completely, actually were.