A stunning masterpiece: Christie’s to auction $35 million Renoir painting owned by New York Mets founding family

This Mets masterpiece is far prettier than this year’s team so far.

The dynamic New York family that helped start Amazins in 1962 is auctioning off nearly a dozen treasures from its storied art collection, including a $35 million Renoir it’s owned for 97 years.

Oil painting of 1877 lilac woman or “Portrait of Nini Lopez” is scheduled to hit the auction block on May 18th.

The piece is one of nine masterpieces from the collection of the late Lorinda Payson de Roulette, heiress and daughter of pioneering Mets founder Joan Whitney Payson.

Mr. de Roule passed away in October 2025 at the age of 95. Her mother, known as the “Mother of the Mets,” acquired an 87% stake in the upstart Queen’s team in its first year, making her the first woman to own a major American sports franchise.

She helped heal the city and baseball fan base that had fled to California in 1958 with the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants.

The family was known as much for their artistic talent as their love of baseball.

“This is one of the greatest American collectors, if not the greatest, throughout the 20th century,” Max Carter, Christie’s global chairman of 20th and 21st century art, told the Post.

The family’s love of art goes back many generations. John Milton Hay was born in 1838 and was Abraham Lincoln’s personal secretary. Hay collected the engravings of his friend Augustus Saint-Gaudens, who designed the $20 gold coin, also known as the Double Eagle.

Hay’s daughter, Helen Hay Whitney, a poet and racehorse owner, married William Payne Whitney, the brother-in-law of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, who founded the Whitney Museum in New York.

Payson and her husband, Charles S. Payson, purchased Renoir in 1929 for $100,000. This is equivalent to $1.9 million today.

Mr. Payson’s granddaughter and heiress Whitney Bullock, 74, recalled visiting Mr. Payson’s Long Island home and greeting the masterpiece in his living room.

“We said, ‘Hello, Renoir,’ just to make sure he was okay,” Block told The Post in an exclusive interview while flipping through a family photo album.

She recalled her grandparents throwing lavish “themed costume parties.” One photo showed my grandfather dressed as Neptune walking up a grand staircase and passing Marc Chagall. acrobatics, It is currently on sale with an expected price of $700,000 to $1 million.

“Growing up, I never thought I would be impressed,” Bullock laughed. “I really loved Chagall. He brought joy to everyone.”

The painters Payson displayed on the walls of his Manhasset mansion were art history figures: Vincent van Gogh, Francisco Goya, El Greco, Paul Gauguin, Winslow Homer, and, of course, Pablo Picasso.

One Christmas, Picasso — Team Lapin Agile — It became the backdrop for the kids’ Nerf darts game.

That’s when Mr. Block’s mother, Ms. de Roulet, decided to sell it. “We’re going to do something different now,” she recalled her mother saying.

A year later, she sold the Picasso for $40.7 million and used the proceeds to start the Patrina Foundation, which gives educational grants to women and girls.

Such philanthropy “was what my mother cared about most,” Block said.

But the family legacy included diamonds, like the baseball diamond.

Around 1915, Joan Whitney Payson began attending Giants games at the Polo Grounds with her mother, Helen Hay Whitney. “There were only two women there at the time,” Block said.

Payson later bought 10% of the Giants and even tried to prevent owner Horace Stoneham from moving the team to San Francisco.

And so Payson grew even bigger, and the New York Mets were born.

“We used to go there all the time. There was a big line with all the families,” Brock raved about the old Shea Stadium. “I’ve been there for 69 years. I was there for the ‘Black Cat Game.'” That’s when we knew it was going to happen. ”

She was referring to the famous scene on September 9, 1969, when a black cat ran across the dugout of the rival Chicago Cubs at Shea, a scene many Mets fans believe foreshadowed a miraculous run to the World Series.

Bullock then worked as a Mets publicist, enduring fan ire after the infamous Midnight Massacre that resulted in Tom Seaver being traded to the Cincinnati Reds in June 1977.

“I had to take all the calls from very unhappy Mets fans. People were screaming at me,” Bullock shuddered.

When the team was sold to Nelson Doubleday Jr. and Fred Wilpon in 1980, she and her mother, who ran day-to-day operations, were forced out. She said the current owner, Steve Cohen, is trying to restore the family’s legacy.

Renoir and the eight other paintings up for auction will be on display for free to the public from May 9th to May 18th at the Christie’s Rockefeller Center Gallery.

“I hope the painting finds a happy home,” Block said as she closed the photo album.