Monet ‘Water Lilies’ Painting Expected to Fetch $40 Million at Sotheby’s

“This monumental painting beautifully encapsulates how Monet’s oeuvre evolved over time from his Impressionist breakthroughs to a more abstract focus with his preoccupation of his pond and water lilies,” says Julian Dawes, co-head of Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art Department in New York. “From this perspective, this work opens a whole new window onto how Monet would influence later generations of artists who expanded on his radical concepts into full abstraction and set the stage for a new artistic movement that would take the world by storm.”

Monet’s lush depictions of his beloved sun-dappled lily pond are perhaps the most admired and influential paintings of the early-modern era. Monet had already achieved some fame as a painter in Paris as the leading artist of the Impressionist movement, beautifully capturing the city and its street life. But it was in 1883, when he moved with his family to the small farming community of Giverny, that he was totally consumed by the beauty of the natural surroundings and would create some 250 works from there. Three years after purchasing the home, he acquired an adjacent piece of land and applied for permission to dig a pond. In his petition to the local authorities, it is said that Monet specified that the pond would serve “for the pleasure of the eyes and also for the purpose of having subjects to paint.”

Monet is also said to have told a visitor to his studio, “It took me some time to understand my water lilies. I planted them purely for pleasure; I grew them with no thought of painting them. A landscape takes more than a day to get under your skin. And then, all at once, I had the revelation—how wonderful my pond was—and reached for my palette. I’ve hardly had any other subject since that moment.”

Le Bassin aux Nympheas was last was seen on the market at Sotheby’s in 2004, when it was sold from the collection of Hollywood and Broadway producer Ray Stark and his wife, Fran, for $16.8 million, with fees, above a high estimate of $12 million. If it reaches its high estimate of $40 million, it will among the most expensive works by the Impressionist ever to be sold at auction.

In recent years, prices for Monet’s great paintings have soared at auction, driven by increased demand from for museum-quality works. The top price at auction for any Monet painting was set with his Haystacks that sold for $110.7 million at Sotheby’s in New York in 2019. Important past sales from the Giverny series meanwhile, include Le Bassin aux nymphéas, which was formerly owned by the philanthropists Irwin and Xenia Miller and sold at Christie’s London in June 2008 for $80.4 million, doubling its pre-sale estimate of $35 million to $47 million. In 2018, the star lot of the Christie’s Impressionist sale was Monet’s Nymphéas en fleur, formerly owned by David and Peggy Rockefeller. It fetched $84,687,500 against an estimate of $30 million to $40 million.

Christie’s has also announced a painting by Monet will be hitting the block in May 2021 at its 20th-century sale. Waterloo Bridge, effet de brouillard, (effect of fog) created between 1899–1903 carries an estimate of $35 million.

The work will go on view in Taipei beginning April 26 before returning to the New York flagship for exhibition by appointment beginning May 1.