Art News: Monet's Iris Sells for €50 Million, a Record for France

On the evening of Thursday 22 October, Claude Monet's Iris, painted at Giverny in 1924 to 1925 and never before shown in public, sold at Sotheby's in Paris for €50 million with fees, about $56 million. Six bidders competed for 45 minutes, and the painting went to a private collector in Asia. It is the highest price ever paid for a work of art at auction in France, beating the €43.2 million paid for Amedeo Modigliani's Tête de caryatide at Christie's Paris in 2010, and it finished €20 million above its top estimate of €22 million to €30 million, itself the highest estimate ever given to a painting at auction in France.

The painting

Iris is a large canvas, 160 by 180 centimetres, from the last years of Monet's work in his garden at Giverny. The iris was among his favourite flowers, and he painted it in around twenty canvases. In these late pictures the flowers, the water and their reflections dissolve into loose, heavy brushwork, and for years they were dismissed as the work of a painter whose eyesight was failing. They are now seen as forerunners of the large abstract painting that followed in the 20th century, and the market has caught up with that view. Sotheby's catalogued Iris as never varnished and never relined, in the state in which it left the studio.

Where it came from

Monet left the paintings in his studio to his son Michel. In 1956 the Paris dealer Katia Granoff bought the studio holdings, with the backing of the Schlumberger family, and over the following decades Jeanne Schlumberger (1889–1983) built a collection with Granoff's advice and kept it in the family's townhouse in the 7th arrondissement. Iris never left the house and was known only from a black-and-white photograph until Sotheby's put it on view this autumn.

The rest of the Schlumberger sale

The sale, Le Temps retrouvé: The Schlumberger Collection, made €74.4 million, the highest total for a collection at Sotheby's in Paris, and 74 per cent of its lots sold above their estimates. Three more Monets sold. Saule pleureur (Weeping Willow), of 1918 to 1919, made €9.6 million, within its estimate of €9 million to €12 million; La Seine à Vernon, arbres, of 1894, made €4.2 million, more than twice its high estimate; and La Maison à travers les roses, of 1925 to 1926, made €2.5 million.

Claude Monet, Weeping Willow, 1918, Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth: from the same series as the Saule pleureur sold in Paris. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Pierre Bonnard's La Cueillette des prunes, of about 1899, made €2.5 million, and Gustave Moreau's Rêve d'Orient, of 1881, €1.4 million, both the highest prices for those artists at auction in France. Camille Claudel's La Valse, a small cast of her dancing couple of 1895, made €832,000 against an estimate of €400,000 to €600,000.

Three early paintings by Paul Cézanne, made between 1862 and 1864 as part of the murals in the Jas de Bouffan, his family's house in Aix-en-Provence, were withdrawn hours before the sale. They are classified as national treasures, and under an agreement with the owners the city of Aix, with the Ministry of Culture, is set to acquire them for its Musée Granet.

Christie's the same evening

Christie's held its own Paris sale on the same day, selling 26 works for €41.6 million with fees. Monet led there too: Bord des falaises à Pourville made €12.7 million and Trois pots de tulipes €3.1 million. Pierre-Auguste Renoir's Jeunes filles au bord de la mer made €5.8 million, and Pablo Picasso's Nature morte au gruyère €3 million.

The sales came in a turbulent week in Paris. Art Basel Paris, which opened at the Grand Palais on Tuesday, closes two days early, at 7pm today, because of demonstrations planned across the city this weekend; our calendar of the season's fairs and auctions has the details. The week before, in London, a Kandinsky made £31.6 million at Christie's.

What the sale means if you own a Monet

The Monet auction record is still the $110.7 million paid for one of his Meules (haystacks) in New York in 2019, and Iris does not come near it. What it shows is how the late Giverny paintings, once the least regarded part of his work, are now among the most sought after, and how much a painting gains from coming to market for the first time, in untouched condition, with a history that runs straight back to the artist's family.

Those three things decide the value of a Monet as much as the subject: when and where it was painted, its condition, and its provenance, which for any Monet should be checked against the Wildenstein catalogue raisonné. Monet comes to Tate Modern in February 2027, and interest in his work will only grow before then.

If you own a work by Monet or any of the artists here and are thinking of selling, send us photographs of the front and the back for a free valuation. There is no obligation to sell, and we act for you rather than for the saleroom.

Cover: Claude Monet, Iris jaunes au nuage rose, 1925, another of his late iris paintings, not the painting sold. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.