A work by Monet not seen in public for more than 50 years sold for £23.7 million at auction in London.
The 1908 painting, Nympheas — owned by the same family since 1932 and not displayed in public since 1962 — led last night’s sale of modernist and Impressionist art at Sotheby’s in which £99 million changed hands.
Also sold was Modigliani’s portrait of an anonymous young man. Three different bidders drove the final sale price up to £18.4 million.
Helena Newman, Worldwide Head of Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art Department, said interest from around the world was proof that “great art drives a strong market”.
This week’s sales come after it was announced that the auction house itself has been sold to French Israeli businessman Patrick Drahi for just short of £3 billion.
If the deal is approved by shareholders and regulators, the firm which founded in London in 1744, will become a privately held company for the first time in more than three decades.
