Courtesy of Christie’s
Christie’s announced Thursday that it will offer Claude Monet‘s painting Le bassin aux nymphéas (1917-1919) at its 20th Century evening sale in New York this November. The painting, which will sell with a guarantee, carries an estimate of $65 million.
The painting of Monet’s Giverny gardens, two meters wide by one meter tall, was in Monet’s estate when he died in 1926. It has been in the same private collection since 1972, according to the auction house.
“As far as we can tell, it has never been seen publicly, which also means it is in great condition,” Max Carter, Christie’s vice chairman of 20th and 21st Century Art, Americas, told the Financial Times.
Monet’s auction record was last set in May 2019 when Sotheby’s sold the artist’s 1890 landscape Meules (Haystacks) for $110.7 million, more than double the work’s $55 million estimate. At the time, the work was the highest price ever fetched for a work of Impressionism and had previously been sold at Christie’s New York in May 1986 for $2.53 million.
In 2018, Nymphéas en fleur (1914–17), similarly a painting of the artist’s gardens, sold for $84.7 million at Christie’s New York from the collection of Peggy and David Rockefeller. That price was the previous record for the artist until the selling of the haystacks painting.
