On Tuesday at a Christie’s auction in London, “Le Bassin aux Nymphéas,” a rarely seen painting of Claude Monet’s beloved water lilies sold for a record $80.4 million, smashing the painter’s own record and proving to the world that the art market, unlike the stock market, is alive and well.
Bidding was described by news outlets as “intense” and “standing room only,” going to “a blond woman in the front row,” who represented an anonymous buyer.

The painting, which was expected to collect about $50 million, last sold at auction in 1971 for $320,000 and remained in private hands since then. Christie’s called the piece “one of the great rarities of Impressionist and Modern art,” and highlighted that it was “signed, dated and sold” by Monet—apparently another rarity. The work is part of a series of four from 1919.

All about water lilies
In the early 1830s, Monet moved to Giverny, northeast of Paris. There he created magnificent gardens and built the water-lily pond, the almost exclusive subject (250) of his later works. Lilies were just one of his many series—the Rouen Cathedral, haystacks, Waterloo Bridge—where he depicted the same subject in different light, time and season.

More about Monet (1840-1926)
Monet began his career drawing caricatures as a teenager in Le Havre, France. Under the mentorship of Eugene Boudin, a painter of landscapes, Monet developed a predilection for painting out of doors. During his life he collaborated with other well known Impressionists such as Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Alfred Sisley.

His work, and the Impressionist movement he pushed forward, centered on the use of spontaneous, staccato brushwork to capture light and form within natural scenes. Interestingly, the term Impressionism stems from a work by Monet, "Impression: Sunrise," which a critic deemed an "impression," or unfinished.

In his later years, Monet suffered from cataracts which limited his ability to distinguish colors and most likely contributed to the dark and red browns used in "The Japanese Bridge" he painted at Giverny in the early 1920's. 

The big picture
The art market of late has been on fire, and Tuesday’s auction—combined with a week of London are auctions at Christie’s and Sotheby’s—could reap $1 billion. Despite sentiment that the dismal stock market and other economic woes could dent art prices, new wealth from places like Russia is helping buoy the market. And that sounds like another good Diva topic for another week!