A painting by Claude Monet that has long been held in US collections will be up for auction next month at Sotheby’s New York, as this year marks the sesquicentennial of the first Impressionist show in Paris, an exhibition where Monet had an overwhelming presence.
The auction house estimates Meules à Giverny (1893) will sell in excess of $30m at the Modern evening auction on 15 May. Its first owner was the American landscape painter Dwight Blaney, who purchased it in Paris before bringing it to the US in 1895. He then lent it to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and other institutions. Ever since Blaney brought the painting across the Atlantic, Meules à Giverny has remained exclusively in US collections, according to Sotheby’s.
For the past four decades, the painting has been in the possession of an American collector who is also consigning works by Camille Pissarro, Childe Hassam and Pablo Picasso during sales next month. Meules à Giverny will go on display in New York starting 3 May.
Meules à Giverny is one of only a handful of works by Monet featuring the motif of a haystack in the French countryside to come to auction in recent years. Five years ago, another haystack painting by Monet, Meules (1890), sold for $110.7m at Sotheby's New York during the May sales, setting an artist record and the highest price for any work by an Impressionist at auction. April marks the 150th anniversary of the first Impressionist exhibition in Paris; Monet’s painting Impression, Sunrise (1872) lent its name to the movement.
Monet's Bennecourt (1887) Courtesy Sotheby's
From the same collection, Monet’s Bennecourt (1887), a painting gifted by the artist to John Singer Sargent, is estimated to sell for between $6m and $8m, along with an early Picasso painting called Courses de taureaux (1901) depicting a bullfight—the first of its kind to appear at auction in more than two decades, according to Sotheby’s. A painting by Pissarro, Paysage aux Pâtis, Pontoise, la moisson (1873), and Childe Hassam’s View of Broadway and Fifth Avenue (1890) have estimates of between $2.5m and $3.5m, and $800,000 and $1.2m, respectively.
Christie’s has also scored a major work by Monet this season. Moulin de Limetz (1888), which has for decades been partially owned by the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, is estimated to sell for between $18m and $25m. Other major consignments for the New York May sales include a handful of paintings by Jean-Michel Basquiat with eight-figure estimates, including Untitled (ELMAR) (1982), which Bonhams says could fetch as much as $60m.