County Museum Gets a Renoir

“The Huntsman,” a youthful portrait of filmmaker Jean Renoir by his father, French Impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir, has been given to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Jean Renoir bequeathed the painting to the museum at his death in 1979, but it remained in the family estate until the death of his widow, Dido, earlier this year. The life-size portrayal of a 15-year-old boy in a lush green landscape will go on view Friday on the second floor of the Ahmanson Building.

The museum did not disclose the value of the gift, but Renoir’s paintings have routinely sold for $1 million or more apiece in recent auctions--primarily to Japanese collectors. The J. Paul Getty Museum paid a record $17.68 million in 1989 for Renoir’s 1870 painting “The Promenade.” Japanese businessman Ryoei Saito shattered that record in May when he paid the astonishing sum of $78.1 million for “Au Moulin de la Galette,” the most highly prized Renoir to come on the market in many years.

“The Huntsman,” which was painted in 1910, when Pierre-Auguste Renoir was 69, is not in a league with these prime works from the painter’s earlier, more vigorous years.