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Monet Painting Sells for £32m at Sotheby’s Auction
A painting by legendary French impressionist painter Claude Monet has sold for £32 million at a Sotheby’s auction in London.
Created in 1906, he water lilies painting from Monet’s famous ‘Nymphéas’ series was sold to an unknown bidder for a price that represented the second highest ever paid for the artist at auction.
Inspired by the lily pond in Monet’s garden at Giverny in northern France, the ‘Nymphéas’ series contains around 250 oil paintings and are among his most celebrated works.
Two other Monet paintings, Antibes, Vue du Plateau Notre Dame (1888) and La Seine à Argenteuil (1875) were sold for £7,922,500 ($13,503,901) and £8,538,500 ($14,553,873) respectively at the London auction.
The sale yielded a total of £122 million including Picasso’s 1937 Portrait de Femme (£5 million) and Max Beckmann’s 1924 Stilleben mit Grammophon und Schwertlilien (£4,786,500).
Born in 1840, Monet is considered the founder of French Impressionist painting and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy.