Claude Monet – Le Grand Canal sold for £23.67 million.
Claude Monet’s 1908 view of Venice entitled Le Grand Canal sold for £23.67 million at an historic record breaking series of sales at Sotheby’s in London tonight. It was one of five Monet’s which together sold for a total of £55.74 million during one hour at this evening’s sale of Impressionist and Modern Art. Another Monet, Les Peupliers à Giverny from 1887 made £10.79 million. The Venice work has been displayed for the past eight years at the National Gallery in London. Les Peupliers à Giverny came from the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York and was sold to benefit the Acquisitions Fund.
Henri Matisse’s Odalisque au fauteuil noir sold for £15.83 million. There was a new auction record for a work on paper by Georges Seurat. Étude pour une baignade, Asnières sold for £7.7 million. It relates to one of Seurat’s greatest paintings, Une baignade, Asnières from 1883-1884, which hangs in the National Gallery, London.
Henry Wyndham selling the top lot at the auction.
By the end of the evening the total of £186.4 million for the Impressionist, Modern and Surrealist art evening sales was the highest total for any auction ever held in London. There were participants from 35 countries across six continents with collectors from Asia and Russia asserting themselves as a continuing force in the market.
The day sales on February 4 added another £25.6 million with participation from 52 countries. This brought Sotheby’s February auctions of Impressionist, Modern and Surrealist art to a grand total of £212 million.
(See posts on antiquesandartireland.com for January 3, 8 and 28, 2015).