Monet oil painting sells for a record US$110.7 million at Sotheby’s auction
A Claude Monet painting has sold for US$110.7 million at a Sotheby’s auction in New York City, according to CNN.
The 1890 oil on canvas, titled Meules from Monet’s Haystacks series broke the record for the most expensive Impressionist artwork ever sold at auction, according to Sotheby’s.
The painting sold after eight minutes of “heated competition” between six bidders, The New York Times reported. The buyer was in the room but has not been identified. The US$110.7 million price tag is about 44 times the US$2.5 million the seller paid for the painting in 1986.
Monet painted his Haystacks series at his home in Giverny, France, in the winter of 1890-1891.
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The one sold on Tuesday evening “distinguishes itself from others in the series by its vibrant paint palette, dramatic diagonal brushstrokes of varying directions that meet at the centre and a unique perspective with only part of the first haystack appearing in the foreground,” according to AFP.
While it broke the record for Impressionism, the Monet painting is not the most expensive painting ever sold at auction. That would be Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi, which sold for US$450 million at a Christie’s auction in 2017 to Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia.
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- Monet painted Meules at home in Giverny, France in 1890