“Why my father had insisted on showing me in this outfit that I hated I don’t know.”
-Jean Renoir (qtd. White 210)
Such was Jean Renoir’s disgusted response to the clothing his father made him wear when he posed for Child with a Hoop. The outfit he was referring to included a black velvet dress with a white ribbon about the waist and a large lacy white collar. All this is topped off by a pink bow in those long golden locks of his. It is easy to see why a boy would protest to this outfit, as it made him look like a girl. Nor was this the only case of Renoir dressing Jean up as a girl. He did so in almost all of his paintings of him, only adding to how he had already feminized his son by refusing to cut his hair. The same was true for Coco.
When Jean and Coco were babies, this was not so shocking, as at this age it was common to dress baby girls and boys in a similar fashion. Nevertheless, it must be wondered if Renoir took advantage of this fact to the point of being ridiculous sometimes. For example, in The Artist’s Family (1896) Jean is wearing a white dress and bonnet so huge and frilly it is rather comical. Even a girl would have looked ridiculous in Jean’s bonnet, yet Renoir felt compelled to dress his son in it. Claude’s comparably frilly outfit in Claude and Renee has a similar effect.
As his two youngest sons grew older, Renoir’s cross-dressing of them becomes even more distinct and more shocking. . In a painting titled Jean Renoir Sewing Jean truly is unmistakable from a girl. He is wearing a red dress, and his long blonde hair is tied up with another pinkish ribbon. Later, in Claude Playing, Renoir painted his youngest son in yet another red dress with another ribbon.
This pattern for cross-dressing his sons is nearly as odd as Renoir’s obsession with not cutting their hair. Although it represented a less permanent change - as he only crossed dressed them when he painted them, not all the time, it still indicates a strong desire to feminize his sons and transform them into something they were not.
Above: Renoir, Pierre Auguste. The Artist’s Family. The Barnes Foundation, Merion, PA.