The White Pierrot

The White Pierrot at the Detroit Institute of Arts dates from 1901 and shows one of Renoir's sons — possibly Jean, aged seven, or Pierre — dressed in the white costume and conical hat of the sad clown figure who had haunted French art and literature from Watteau onward. The Pierrot or Pedrolino was the commedia dell'arte character associated with unrequited love, melancholy beneath performance, and the pathos of the human condition expressed through theatrical convention. Watteau's Pierrot in the Louvre had given the figure its canonical French pictorial form in the 1710s, and the late nineteenth century — through Verlaine's poetry, Degas's harlequins, and Toulouse-Lautrec's theatrical subjects — had renewed interest in the performer as a vehicle for both social observation and psychological depth. Renoir's version is characteristically warmer and less melancholy than these predecessors: the child in the white costume is more endearing than haunting, the theatrical costume providing a pretext for exploring the chromatic richness of white in different light conditions rather than for meditation on performance and isolation.

The white costume provides Renoir with an extended surface for exploring the chromatic richness of white in shadow and light — white is never neutral in his painting but absorbs and reflects the surrounding colour temperatures. The ruffled collar's complex fabric creates a rich textural focus around the child's face.