Monet’s Water Lilies Expected To Blossom In Sales With $40M Price At Auction
Image via Sotheby's
At the end of Sotheby’s modern art evening sale in Hong Kong last Sunday, vice chairman Brooke Lampley unveiled one of Claude Monet’s paintings to the audience at a live-streamed auction. Titled Le Bassin aux Nymphéas, the painting is going on sale at the auction house on May 12, where it is expected to fetch US$40 million at Sotheby’s New York Impressionist and modern art evening sale.
Inspired by his famed garden in Giverny, France, the painting is part of a series that has fetched top dollar in previous auctions. One work from the series sold at Christie’s in 2008 for £40.9 million (US$80.5 million). Another from the David Rockefeller collection sold for US$84 million in 2018.
According to ARTnews, if the painting manages to sell for the estimated US$40 million or more, it will be among the top 10 works by Monet ever to be sold at an auction. This isn’t the first time the work has appeared at Sotheby’s; the seller purchased the piece 17 years ago during the auction house’s art sale for US$16.8 million.
Le Bassin aux Nymphéas will go on view in Taipei before returning to Sotheby’s York Avenue galleries in New York City for exhibition by appointment beginning May 1.
[via ARTnews, cover image via Sotheby's]
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