New Delhi: A painting by French artist Claude Monet has become the most expensive artwork ever sold at auction in France, fetching 50 million euros, including buyer’s fees, in Paris on Thursday.
The painting, Iris, was acquired by a private collector in Asia, according to Thomas Bompard, co-head of Sotheby’s Modern and Contemporary Art department in France.
It was auctioned by the heirs of French collector Jeanne Schlumberger, who had kept the work at her Left Bank residence and repeatedly declined requests to lend it for public exhibitions.
The sale comes in the year marking the centenary of Monet’s death on 5 December 1926. Two exhibitions in Paris are commemorating the artist: Monet, Painting Time and Stories of Landscapes from Monet to Hockney.
Sotheby’s had estimated Iris would fetch between 22 million euros and 30 million euros. Alongside Iris, the sale included three other Monet canvases, including Weeping Willow, valued at 9-12 million euros.
Monet’s late works in demand
Monet painted Iris between 1924 and 1925 at Giverny, near Paris, during the later years of his career, when he was creating his celebrated water lily paintings.
The paintings had never been publicly exhibited before. Bompard described Iris as being in “miraculous” condition, saying it was untouched, unvarnished and unlined — a rarity for a work of its calibre. He made the remarks to reporters last month.
Bompard added that Monet’s late works had become increasingly sought-after, with Schlumberger drawn to their contemporary and abstract qualities rather than his Impressionist touches.
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Monet and the rise of Impressionism
Monet was a French painter and a founder of Impressionism, an art movement that emphasised light, colour and the changing effects of the natural world.
His work is also regarded as an important precursor to modernism.
His popularity surged in the second half of the 20th century, when he became one of the world’s most celebrated painters and a source of inspiration for a burgeoning group of artists.
(Edited by Maryam Hassan)