NEW YORK, NY.- Christie's will offer the masterpiece La femme aux lilas (Portrait de Nini Lopez) by Pierre-Auguste Renoir from the esteemed collection of Lorinda Payson de Roulet as a highlight of its 20th Century Evening Sale on May 18. The defining Impressionist work of the season and among the most important paintings by Renoir ever at auction, this seminal portrait is estimated to achieve $25 – 35 million. Mrs. de Roulet comes from a legacy of exceptional art collectors and storied New Yorkers: she is a member of the Whitney family, including, via marriage, the inimitable Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, founder of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Her mother Joan Whitney Payson—following the example of Mrs. de Roulet's grandparents Helen Hay Whitney and William Payne Whitney—was a formidable and discerning collector who obtained the Renoir in 1929 at the outset of her collecting journey. The painting boasts unmatched provenance, held in the same prestigious collection for 97 years.

The collection also features works by exemplary artists including Marc Chagall, Edgar Degas, Winslow Homer, Alfred Sisley and Andrew Wyeth, all to be offered during Spring Marquee Week Sales. A selection of jewelry belonging to Lorinda Payson de Roulet will be offered during Luxury Week in June. The estate is represented by Art Market Advisors.

Max Carter, Christie's Global Chairman of 20th and 21st Century Art, remarks: “Renoir's gift to art history was the Impressionist portrait, and La femme aux lilas is among its incontestable masterpieces. Acquired by Joan Whitney Payson and Charles Payson at the beginning of their legendary collecting journey in December 1929, it has remained in the family ever since. 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.”

Among the most recognized and celebrated icons of art history are Renoir's portraits created in the mid-1870s during the time of the first Impressionist exhibitions. La femme aux lilas is a singular example within this highly desirable body of work, featuring the artist's favorite muse and model, Nini Lopez, seen in Renoir's most famous works including La Loge (1874, The Courtald). Painted in 1876-1877, La femme aux lilas is the pinnacle of the canvases featuring this subject and the largest single portrait of Nini remaining in private hands.

La femme aux lilas was acquired by Mrs. de Roulet's parents Joan Whitney Payson and Charles Payson in 1929 for the remarkable price at the time of $100,000, the same year her uncle John Hay Whitney acquired another Renoir masterwork, Au Moulin de la Galette of 1876, for $165,000. When Au Moulin de la Galette came to auction in 1990, it sold for an unprecedented sum of $78.1 million (nearly $195 million in USD today), establishing a record price for the Impressionist master which, 36 years later, still remains unbroken. La femme aux lilas is the greatest Renoir to come to market in the decades since.

The painting hung in Mrs. de Roulet's Manhasset, Long Island living room, according to her daughter Whitney Bullock. “We all loved the Renoir,” she said. “It's a gorgeous painting. When we would get poshed up and go into the living room, that was the backdrop.”

For more than a century, Lorinda Payson de Roulet's family has played a powerful role in shaping American culture through countless philanthropic contributions and ongoing patronage in the art world and beyond. Her grandmother Helen Hay Whitney—Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney's sister-in-law—instilled a love of art in the family, purchasing her daughter Joan Whitney Payson's first painting, Edgar Degas' Enfants et poneys dans un parc, as an 18th birthday present. Joan Whitney Payson and her husband went on to assemble one of the finest private art collections of the 20th century, generously donating many masterpieces to leading institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of Contemporary American Art. In 1962, Mrs. Payson—who also received a love of baseball from her mother Helen Hay Whitney—famously founded the New York Mets and became the first woman to be principal owner and operator of a major American sports team. Following her mother's passing in 1975, Mrs. de Roulet succeeded her mother as President of the baseball team, taking on all day-to-day operations. In addition to making a name for herself as a female pioneer in the sports industry, she advocated for welfare and community, serving in leadership roles at the North Shore University Hospital and as a founder of the Patrina Foundation, an organization dedicated to providing women and girls with educational and social service resources. Mrs. Bullock recalled that her mother started that organization with funds obtained through the sale of Pablo Picasso's Au Lapin Agile. “She decided to sell that when we were over on Christmas morning, and my sons were shooting Nerf balls a bit too close to it. She decided it should have a different purpose.” When the painting was later added to the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Mrs. Bullock said, “Mum was proud of that. She was so happy to see her picture on the wall.”

Mrs. Bullock said her mother—a die-hard sports fan with season tickets to the Mets, the U.S. Open, and Belmont who passed away last year—was “ahead of her time,” successful in industries such as business and sports that were “not always easy for women.” She had a deep love for the Metropolitan Opera and she often attended performances, all while maintaining the importance of her own privacy. She focused on regular Sunday dinners with family on Long Island as opposed to the spotlight—and as a result, the important stories of her contributions to New York and beyond haven't been widely told. “My grandmother just did what she had to do, and so did my mum. She loved her family, she loved her causes. She smiled sweetly and didn't make a lot of noise. But she accomplished so much.”

"Mrs. de Roulet is such an important part of this great American family that embodies the best of what I would describe as the American dream,” said Warren P. Weitman, Jr., a founder of Art Market Advisors who worked with Mrs. de Roulet and the Payson family for decades. “Art, sports, philanthropy. Those three dimensions created such a profound legacy, with vast contributions to health care, support of major institutions like the Metropolitan Opera, the founding of the Mets, her foundation to support women's causes.”

He added, “Mrs. de Roulet was understated grace and consummate elegance. She would show people how to live as opposed to telling them. She didn't need, or desire, a spotlight. She was greatly admired and respected.”

Mrs. de Roulet's collection is being offered this spring in New York alongside works from the most historically significant collections of modern and contemporary art, including two other iconic women collectors, Marian Goodman and Agnes Gund.