Much more famous than Renoir’s paintings of young boys were his portraits of young girls. Girl with a Hoop is just one of the many. Renoir painted nearly all of his feminine models, including young girls, in an idealized manner. He liked certain qualities like small noses, small teeth, pouting lips, pale skin, and blonde hair. (Wadley 354) It is no surprise then that he favored these same qualities in his sons, and did everything he could to play up these qualities. If one compares his son’s features to those of Renoir’s idealized, always pretty young girls, a striking similarity can be seen.
One of Renoir’s most famous portraits of a girl is Girl with a Watering Can (1876). This shows a girl who cannot be more than seven standing in a garden, with her golden curls spilling from behind her ears. In addition she has a tiny nose, pale skin, and rosy lips. For all that this painting shows a prim proper girl standing in a garden, almost the same figure could be transposed into Renoir’s Gypsy Girl (1879) 
For all that she is dressed in rags compared to the girl with the watering cans, the gypsy girl still has the tumbling reddish gold curls and idealized features of her richer counterpart.
It becomes apparent that Renoir was fond of playing with light on golden curls, regardless of the gender of his model. Renoir was able to paint these girls in this idealized manner without question. Transforming a girl into something beautiful has always been a popular theme in art, and it was exactly the reason why many of his patrons hired him. Doing the same for boys, however, is more of an aberration from the norm. This is especially true when the boys are not painted as pretty boys, but as pretty girls.
Above: Renoir, Pierre Auguste. Girl with a Watering Can. National Gallery. Washington, DC.
Renoir, Pierre Auguste. Gypsy Girl. Private Collection. Canada.