Renoir Not Seen in Public for 97 Years Will Go Up for Auction in May

Renoir Not Seen in Public for 97 Years Will Go Up for Auction in May

ARenoirthat hasn’t been seen in public in ninety-seven years due to the fact that it’s been ensconced in the private collection of the Whitney Payson family is going up forauction.La femme aux lilas (Portrait de Nini Lopez)(Woman with Lilacs [Portrait of Nine Lopez]), 1876–77, is a defining Impressionist masterpiece depicting the artist’s favorite muse and model—it’s the largest portrait of Lopez that’s remained in private hands. The painting will go up for sale atChristie’son May 18.

Rendered with a deep blue backdrop and whorls of soft spring colors,La femmefinds Lopez staring peaceably into the middle distance, holding a bouquet of flowers. The painting was completed between 1876 and 1877, and it’s predicted that this year it will sell for between $25 and $35 million dollars.

The painting comes from the collection of Lorinda Payson de Roulet, whose mother, Joan Whitney Payson, was the co-founder and majority owner of the New York Mets. Joan Whitney Payson originally bought the Renoir for $100,000 in 1929 and eventually passed it down to her daughter. “This is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, American collecting family over the 20th century,” Max Carter, Christie’s global chairman of 20th- and 21st-century art, told the New York Post. 

“Renoir’s gift to art history was the Impressionist portrait, and La femme aux lilas is among its incontestable masterpieces,” Carter added in a statement. “Its peers are Renoir’s greatest figure paintings of the 1870s, the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist icons from the Whitney Payson collection, and the finest Renoirs ever sold.”

The auction record for a Renoir—$78.1 million for Au Moulin de la Galette, 1876—came about due to the collection of another Whitney family member: John Hay Whitney.