Claude Monet – Le Palais Ducal UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £27.5 MILLION
A rare view of Venice by Claude Monet will come to auction for the first time at Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern Art evening sale in London on February 26. Le Palais Ducal has been in the same family collection since 1925 when it was acquired by Erich Goeritz, a Berlin-based textile manufacturer. Goeritz built an extensive collection that was both eclectic and forward-thinking, counting among its number celebrated works such as Édouard Manet’s Un bar aux Folies-Bergère, now in the Courtauld Insitute of Art, London. Philanthropic in his artistic endeavours he gifted a substantial number of works to the newly founded Tel Aviv Museum of Art in 1933 as well as donating to British institutions including the British Museum and the Tate
Claude Monet arrived in Venice on 1 October 1908 – and, taken aback by the splendour of what he saw, the artist declared the city ‘too beautiful to paint’. Enchanted by the city, Monet painted just under forty canvases during the course of his three month stay, the greater part of which adorn the walls of museums across the globe. This one depicts the historic Gothic façade of the Doge’s palace, and it belongs to a celebrated group of three works painted from the vantage of a boat moored along the canal, one of which is held in the collection of the Brooklyn Museum in New York. Painted in 1908 Le Palais Ducal is estimated at £20-30 million.
