Christie’s upcoming Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale on May 4 will include Pierre Bonnard’s Le petit déjeuner, an important interior scene from the artist’s last decade, a significant period of modernist innovation for the artist. Previously featured in museum retrospectives of the artist’s work at the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, among others, this radiant 1936 painting has been in the private collection of the late arts patron Evelyn Annenberg Jaffe Hall since it was acquired more than sixty years ago. […]

Widely exhibited and published, Le petit déjeuner has never before been offered at auction.  It was acquired by Mr. and Mrs. William B. Jaffe in 1949.  The couple assembled an outstanding private collection of fine art, and became major benefactors to New York’s Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In the past 12 months alone, the world auction record price for any work by the artist has been broken twice, with the most recent price of US$ 11.4 million achieved for Terrasse à Vernon, sold at Christie’s London in February this year.  Estimated at US$ 6-9 million, Le petit déjeuner is poised to become one of the artist’s top-selling works at auction.