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Renoir Painting from Mets Founder's Family Collection Heads to Auction for Up to $35 Million
A 1877 Renoir oil painting from the collection of Lorinda Payson de Roulet, daughter of New York Mets founder Joan Whitney Payson, will be auctioned on May 18. The work, expected to fetch up to $35 million, is among nine treasures from the family holdings. Proceeds from past sales have supported educational grants for women and girls.
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for May Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s
La femme aux lilas (Portrait de Nini Lopez), an 1877 oil painting, will go on sale at auction on May 18, the New York Post reported.
The painting is one of nine treasures from the collection of the late Lorinda Payson de Roulet, the daughter of Mets founder Joan Payson Whitney. De Roulet died in October 2025 at age 95. She acquired 87% of the New York Mets in its inaugural season of 1962.
The family also owned works by Vincent van Gogh, Francisco Goya, El Greco, Paul Gauguin, Winslow Homer, and Pablo Picasso.
Payson and her husband Charles S.
Max Carter, Christie’s global chairman of 20th- and 21st-century art, described the family as one of the greatest American collecting families over the 20th century. Whitney Bullock, 74, granddaughter of Joan Payson, noted that around 1915, Joan began attending New York Giants games at the Polo Grounds with her mother Helen Hay Whitney, a poet and philanthropist.
Joan bought a 10% stake in the New York Giants and tried to stop owner Horace Stoneham from moving the team to San Francisco. The Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants moved to California in 1958.
Chagall’s L'Acrobate is also on the auction block, expected to sell for $700,000 to $1 million, the New York Post reported.
