CLAUDE MONET (1840-1926)
“Nymphéas“, oil on canvas, painted in 1905
34 ¾x 38 ¾in. (89.5 x 99.5 cm.)
Estimate: $30,000,000-50,000,000
SOLD FOR $43,762,500
Monet leads Christie’s auction, November 2012 Rare masterpieces by Claude Monet, Wassily Kandinsky and Constantin Brancusi led the November 7 evening sale of Impressionist & Modern Art at Christie’s New York, realizing a grand total of $204,800,000 (£129,024,000/ €159,744,000)]]>
November 8, 2012, source: Christie’s
The top price for the evening was achieved by Claude Monet’s Impressionist masterpiece Nymphéas (The Water Lilies), a view of the lily pond at Giverny from the iconic series that was the crowning achievement of the artist’s career. The painting dates from 1905, the year Monet began his most intensive work on a dazzling array of paintings of the lily pond at the heart of his garden. Working feverishly, he would complete more than 60 increasingly abstract views of the pond between 1905 and 1908, or about one every three weeks. The work sold for $43,762,500 (£27,570,375 / €34,134,750) to an American private bidder on the telephone, achieving the second highest price for the artist at auction.
Among the most anticipated lots of the sale was Wassily Kandinsky’s Expressionist tour-de-force “Studie für Improvisation 8”, from the artist’s pioneering series of 1909, which achieved $23,042,500 (£14,516,775/ € 17,973,150) and set a new world auction record for the artist.
Leading the sculptural works in the auction was Constantin Brancusi’s masterpiece “Une Muse”, a pivotal work in plaster from 1912 that sold for $12,402,500 (£7,813,575/ € 9,673,950). With its upright pose, elegantly curving neck and expressive features, “Une Muse” captures a critical moment in the artist’s creative evolution and has been widely heralded as a pivotal composition in Brancusi’s mature career.
An exceptional group of works by Pablo Picasso was led by “Buste de femme” of 1937, an unusually warm and intimate portrait of the artist’s raven-haired muse, the photographer Dora Maar, sold for $13,074,500 (£8,236,935/€ 10,198,110). Surrealist works were led by Joan Miró’s “Peinture (Femme, Journal, Chien”) from 1925, which achieved $13,746,500 (£8,660,295/ € 10,722,270).
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Monet masterpiece sells for £41 million / $80.5 million – a record price for the artist at auction (news, 2008)
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