For the first time in 97 years, Pierre-Auguste Renoir‘s “La femme aux lilas” (Portrait of Nini Lopez) will be available for sale at auction, with an estimated price of $25 million to $35 million.
The painting, which will be featured in the Christie’s on May 18, depicts Nini Lopez, a young Parisian actress, a woman with golden hair, pale white skin and flushed cheeks looking into the distance as she holds a bouquet of white and pink flowers.
The 1929 artwork belongs to the Whitney-Paysons, a historic American family that Max Carter, global president of 20th- and 21st-century art for Christie’s, described in the New York Post as “one of the largest, if not the largest, American family of collectors in the 20th century.”
The Renoir painting was purchased for $100,000 in 1929 by Joan Whitney Payson and her husband, Charles Payson. The work was one of the first Whitney Payson bought, as she went on to create one of the most historic collections of Impressionist and post-Impressionist art and founded the New York Mets baseball team. Her collection is now on permanent loan to the Portland Museum of Art in Maine.
The work is included in the collection of Lorinda Payson de Roulet, daughter of Joan and Charles Payson. “Renoir’s gift to art history was the Impressionist portrait, and La femme aux lilas is among his undoubted masterpieces. It was acquired by Joan Whitney Payson and Charles Payson at the beginning of their legendary collecting trip in December 1929 and has remained in the family ever since,” Max Carter said, according to a press release from the auction house.
Ask me anything
Explore related questions
