Hidden Monet sells for 50 million euros in Paris
Canvas spent a century unseen and known only from a black-and-white photograph, record price for any artwork at a French auction
Images
Beim Auktionshaus Sotheby’s wurde ein Gemälde von Claude Monet versteigertFoto: Sotheby's via Bestimage
Foto: Sotheby's via Bestimage
Das „Iris“-Gemälde entstand vor etwas mehr als 100 JahrenFoto: action press
Foto: action press
A Claude Monet canvas that spent almost a century hidden from the public sold at Sotheby's in Paris on Thursday evening for 50.045 million euros. The painting, "Iris", had carried an estimate of 22 to 30 million euros. According to Bloomberg, no work of art has ever fetched more at an auction in France.
Monet painted it in 1924 or 1925 at Giverny, in the final years of his life, beside the water-lily pond he had made famous. At just under 1.6 by 1.8 metres it is the largest picture from his iris series ever to reach the market, according to The Art Newspaper. After his death it passed to his son Michel, then through the Paris gallerist Katia Granoff into the collection of Jeanne Schlumberger, wife of company co-founder Marcel Schlumberger. She kept it in her Paris townhouse for decades and declined to lend it to a single exhibition. Until the pre-sale viewing, the art world knew the picture only through a black-and-white photograph.
Pictures that circulate pick up varnish, relining and restorers along the way. Pictures that sit in one townhouse for decades do not. This canvas has never been varnished, never relined, never restored, and its thick, relief-like paint layers sit as Monet left them. The price more than doubles the previous record for the roughly twenty iris pictures Monet painted — 17.1 million euros, set at a London sale in 2015 — and closes within sight of his outright record, "Meules", which fetched just under 100 million euros in New York in 2019.
The consignment came from the Schlumberger heirs. The painting had been seen in public for the first time only days before the sale. The identity of the new owner was not disclosed.