“Pommes et raisins”

A compotier of apples on a draped cloth — red, green and golden fruit piled loosely in a white pierced bowl, scattered apples and grapes on the tablecloth around it, the background a soft Impressionist haze of green and yellow. It is a still life of complete assurance, painted by a woman who learned her craft from the greatest colourist of the nineteenth century. The palette is warm and harmonious — the reds and greens of the apples set against the soft gold of the background, the white of the compotier providing the cool note that holds the whole composition together. The paint is applied with a directness and freshness that reflects Renoir's teaching absolutely: no overworking, no laboured detail, each stroke carrying its full weight of colour and light. The foliage tucked among the fruit is handled with particular delicacy — small, varied marks that suggest growth and freshness without fixing it. This is a still life by a painter who understood what Renoir meant when he said that a painting should be joyful and pretty. Jeanne Baudot (1877–1957) was the only true pupil of Auguste Renoir — his doctor's daughter, introduced to him in 1893 through her cousin the collector Paul Gallimard. Renoir was so struck by her talent that she became his sole student, painting alongside him for years at Louveciennes and elsewhere, accompanying him to the South of France and North Africa. She became godmother to his son Jean Renoir — later one of the greatest film directors in the history of cinema — at the church of Saint-Pierre de Montmartre, with Georges Durand-Ruel as godfather. Renoir painted several portraits of her. She was a childhood friend of Julie Manet, daughter of Berthe Morisot, and appears throughout Julie Manet's diary. In 1949 she published Renoir, ses amis, ses modèles — the most intimate account of the painter ever written. A street in Louveciennes bears her name. The provenance of this work is as close to the painter as it is possible to get. It passed directly from Jeanne Baudot to her godson Jean Griot — the same Jean Griot who held, unknown to the world, the Renoir painting L'enfant et ses jouets – Gabrielle et le fils de l'artiste, Jean, gifted by Renoir to Baudot herself, which sold at Drouot in November 2025 for well over its estimate. A work from Baudot's own hand, from her own collection, passed to the man who preserved Renoir's personal gifts — this is a provenance of the rarest and most intimate kind.