Impressionist and modern Art at Christie’s June 2007, London

Claude Monet, Les arceaux de roses, Giverny, 1913
Estimate: £9million-12 million

Impressionist and modern Art at Christie’s June 2007, London

Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale – Christie’s King Street – Monday, 18 June 2007 at 6.30pm

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London – Building on the success of Christie’s February 2007 evening sale in London which realised a record total of £90 million, the world’s leading art business will present its most important Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale ever held in London on 18 June 2007. Featuring an outstanding selection of 74 works, every area of this field from Impressionism to Surrealism and from Post-Impressionism to Fauvism, German and Austrian Art and Cubism is represented in the sale by examples of the highest quality. With a record pre-sale estimate of between £78 million and £108 million, the auction is led by The Private American Collection of Impressionist and Modern masterpieces, including one of the most important works by Claude Monet to appear at auction in recent years, which have been hidden away and appear at auction for the first time in nearly half a century.

“We are thrilled to offer the strongest and most valuable sale of Impressionist & Modern Art to date at Christie’s in Europe. The strength and depth of the market is evidenced by the superb quality and breadth of the works which are offered in our London Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale which, combined with the day sales, is estimated to fetch between a record £100 million and £140 million. The week of the 18 June promises to be the most important and exciting week of the London auction calendar for 2007,” comments Olivier Camu, Head of Impressionist & Modern Art, Christie’s London.

One of the most important works by Claude Monet (1840-1926) to appear at auction in recent years leads Christie’s Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale on 18 June 2007. Les arceaux de roses, Giverny, 1913, last publicly exhibited in the great 1960 Claude Monet: Seasons and moments exhibition at the New York Museum of Modern Art, is a very rare and beautiful depiction of Monet’s water-lily pond which demonstrates the artist’s virtuosity at using all the colours of his palette. Like its sister piece, Les arches fleuries of 1913 which hangs in the Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona, Les arceaux de roses shows the artist’s rose bower and its dazzling reflection on a water surface strewn with water-lilies in full bloom. It is estimated to fetch between £9 million and £12 million and is the crown jewel of The Private American Collection of 10 superb works of art by masters of Impressionist and Modern Art including Camille Pissarro, Paul Signac, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Marc Chagall. The collection, not seen in public for nearly half a century, is estimated between £14 million and £19 million.

Also offered from The Private American Collection, Camille Pissarro’s (1830-1903) Le Pont-Neuf, naufrage de la Bonne Mère, 1901 (estimate: £2,200,000-3,200,000), formerly in the celebrated Fuld Collection and last seen at auction in 1964, shows the artist as a painter of the modern age with the bustling street atmosphere perfectly conveyed in this scene of cosmopolitan Parisian life. Amongst his series depicting the Pont-Neuf Pissarro painted only two momentous views with the shipwreck of the Bonne Mère just after its collision with the piers of the bridge. Another brilliant rendering of city life on the water is Paul Signac’s (1863- 1935) sumptuous view of Constantinople (Corne d’or), 1909 (estimate: £1,500,000-2,500,000). This breathtaking pointillist view of Istanbul’s Golden Horn and its palaces and mosques with multiple minarets peppering a pink and yellow sunset sky and with shipping in the foreground, combines the artists’ two great passions: painting and boats.

A second museum quality work by Claude Monet in the sale, the very modern and beautiful Waterloo Bridge, temps couvert 1904 (estimate: £6,000,000-8,000,000) formerly in Sir Alexander Korda’s collection, is from his most celebrated series of paintings showing various views of the Thames. Painted from his room in the then newly built, luxurious Savoy Hotel, the work captures Waterloo Bridge with the morning sun glinting on the blue and purple water between the arches. It is a tribute to the success of Monet’s paintings of Waterloo Bridge that most of them are in museum collections throughout the world, leaving only a small number – and very few of the quality of the current example – still in private hands.