The White Pierrot

The White Pierrot (1901), at the Detroit Institute of Arts, depicts the commedia dell'arte figure dressed in the white costume and ruffled collar of the sad clown — a character with long artistic and literary history as a figure of melancholy, love-sickness, and unrequited longing. Renoir had painted his son Jean as a clown earlier, and this Detroit canvas may show another of his children in theatrical costume. The Pierrot figure attracted many late nineteenth and early twentieth century artists — Watteau had established the model, Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec extended it — as an emblem of the performer's emotional ambivalence.

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.