Exceptional Water Lily Painting by Claude Monet to Lead Sotheby’s Modern
and Contemporary Evening Sale in London With £30-40 Million Estimate
- The Highest Estimate Ever Placed on a Work by Monet to Come to Auction
in Europe -
Alongside An Early Portrait of the Artist’s First Wife,
One of Only a Handful Featuring Camille Monet Ever to Appear at Auction
This extraordinary ‘reunion’ brings together two defining works by Claude Monet.
Painted in 1870, the portrait of Camille reads almost as a manifesto of his pioneering plein air approach,
and is remarkable for its freshness, spontaneity and immediacy of vision. Set beside the water lilies -
arguably Monet’s defining and most recognisable body of work - painted almost half a century later, one
can trace the extraordinary arc of his artistic evolution. In many ways, the painting of Camille reveals the
origins of everything that followed, visually laying the foundations for all the revolutionary language Monet
would go on to create, one that would ultimately alter the course of Modern art.”
Helena Newman
Sotheby’s Chairman, Europe & Chairman, Impressionist & Modern Art Worldwide
Two exceptional works by Claude Monet, painted nearly four decades apart,
will headline Sotheby’s Modern and Contemporary Evening auction in London on 24 June. Together, the
paintings encapsulate both the origins and culmination of Monet’s revolutionary artistic practice, drawing
on two of his most enduring sources of inspiration: his water garden at Giverny, and his beloved wife
Camille.
Leading the sale is Nymphéas (1907), a lyrically ethereal and luminous view of Monet’s famed water lily
pond at Giverny, carrying the highest estimate ever placed on a work by the artist to come to auction in
Europe (est. £30-40m). It is joined by Camille assise sur la plage à Trouville, an intimate early portrait of
Monet’s beloved wife Camille on the Normandy coast during the summer of 1870 (est. £7-10m).
Offered from the same private collection, the two paintings share distinguished American provenance.
Nymphéas remained in the collection of renowned patron and collector Anne Bass for nearly four
decades, while Camille assise sur la plage à Trouville formerly belonged to Peggy and David Rockefeller.
Having resided in major American collections for generations, both works will now be presented in
London for the first time.
Seen together, the paintings offer a compelling through-line across Monet’s artistic evolution – one that
would ultimately set to alter the course of art history.
Painted on the cusp of Impressionism, the Trouville
portrait captures a fleeting, wind-swept moment with striking immediacy, while Nymphéas, executed at the
height of Monet’s powers, reflects his profound reimagining of landscape, light, and perception.
Together with the Lewis Collection and other major works, this remarkable pairing arrives at a defining
moment for the London art market, bringing an exceptional concentration of museum-quality works to
auction, including some of the highest-value works ever offered in Europe presented under one roof.
CLAUDE MONET
Nymphéas (1907)
Estimate: £30-40 million
Painted at a landmark moment during Monet's
career, Nymphéas belongs to the pivotal group of
water lily paintings executed between 1904 and
1909, a period during which the artist radically
transformed the language of landscape painting.
Dispensing with the horizon line and dissolving
spatial boundaries, Monet rendered the surface of
his pond as a boundless field of light, colour, and
reflection.
His water garden at Giverny offered an infinite
array of shifting effects and hence, for the artist,
an inexhaustible source of inspiration, presenting
subtle tensions between surface and depth, near
and far, permanence and transience – all unified
within an ever-changing, luminous atmosphere.
Nymphéas is executed in the highly coveted
square format, a compositional innovation that
proved critical to Monet’s artistic evolution. By renouncing traditional landscape and portrait orientations,
he abolished the horizon line entirely, intensifying the immersive, near-abstract quality of his water lilies
while enabling an intimate and contemplative focus on floating vegetation and rippling reflections. The
work signals a decisive departure from traditional landscape conventions and anticipates later
developments in abstraction, exerting a profound influence on generations of artists, including figures
such as Mark Rothko, whose work will be exhibited alongside this canvas in the sale.
Softly atmospheric and richly textured, the composition captures the delicate interplay between floating
blossoms, reflected sky, and rippling water, blurring the distinction between the tangible and the
ephemeral.
CLAUDE MONET
Camille assise sur la plage à Trouville (1870)
Estimate: £7-10 million
Painted at a formative moment in the emergence of
Impressionism, this intimate portrait of Camille Monet,
the artist’s beloved first wife, stands as a striking
example of the artist’s pioneering plein air practice,
distinguished by its immediacy, spontaneity, and
freshness of execution.
Works depicting Monet’s first wife are exceptionally
rare: this is one of only a small handful of such
portraits ever to appear at auction. The painting has
never been exhibited or offered for sale in the UK and
has been shown publicly only once, in Paris in 1970.
Unlike most of Monet’s coastal scenes of the 1860s,
which focus on maritime activity, this composition
captures a quiet, personal moment, elevating the
everyday into something profoundly modern. It
remained in Monet’s possession until 1875, when it
was acquired by the poet and critic Émile Blémont, an
early advocate of Impressionism.
Painted in the summer of 1870, on the eve of the Franco-Prussian War, the scene is notably untouched
by the political turbulence of the moment. Shortly thereafter, Monet fled to London with Camille and their
son, taking works from this pivotal period with him.
Also:
Two Chairs and a Wooden Spoon, July 1988
Fragment zu Improvisation II (Trauermarsch) (Detail of Improvisation II (Funeral March))
Love Is In The Air (life size)
