In Hong Kong, Monet’s water lilies have become a surprise early-summer attraction. Two paintings on loan from the Art Institute of Chicago are drawing long queues at the Hong Kong Museum of Art, where they are on view in Blooming: The Art of Gardens in East and West.
Last week, attention turned to another canvas from the same celebrated series, this time in a London saleroom. At Sotheby’s Modern & Contemporary Evening Auction, Nymphéas (1907) sold for £40.8 million (US$54 million) with fees, making it the most expensive Impressionist work to appear at auction in Europe in more than a decade.
First shown in 1909 at the gallery of Monet's dealer Paul Durand‑Ruel, the work was long held by Texas philanthropist Anne H. Bass before selling at Christie's New York in 2022 for US$56.4 million (around £46.3 million) – meaning its price has slipped by roughly 12% in sterling terms over four years.
Auctioneer Helena Newman (Sotheby's Europe Chairman)
Lot 107 | Claude Monet (1840 - 1926) | Nymphéas, oil on canvas
Executed in 1907
93.7 x 89.5 cm
Provenance (Supplemented by The Value):
- Galerie Durand-Ruel et Cie. and Galerie Bernheim-Jeune et Cie., Paris (acquired from the artist on 3 June 1909)
- James W. Viles, Chicago (acquired from the above on 22 October 1909)
- Durand-Ruel Galleries, New York (acquired from the above on 7 April 1910)
- Arthur B. Emmons, Newport, Rhode Island (acquired from the above on 4 February 1911)
- American Art Association, New York, 14-15 January 1920, lot 38 (consigned by the above)
- Scott and Fowles, New York (acquired from the above sale)
- Helen Swift Neilson, Chicago (acquired from the above)
- The Art Institute of Chicago (acquired by bequest from the above in February 1946)
- E. and A. Silberman Galleries, New York (acquired from the above in December 1947)
- Gabriel Fodor, Geneva (acquired from the above in 1947)
- Wildenstein & Co. Inc., New York (acquired from the above in February 1984)
- Anne H. Bass, New York (acquired from the above on 31 May 1984)
- Christie’s New York, 12 May 2022, lot 12C (consigned by the estate of the above; sold: US$56,495,000)
- Acquired from the above sale by the present owner
Estimate: £30,000,000 - 40,000,000
Hammer Price: £35,000,000
Sold: £40,760,000 (US$54 million)
In the final decades of his career, Monet turned almost entirely to a single subject: the Nymphéas. Inspired by the garden he had created at his home in Giverny, these water-lily paintings are now among the most influential images of Impressionism.
Monet had moved to Giverny in the spring of 1883, after years of financial uncertainty and personal upheaval. When he bought the property in 1890, he began transforming the grounds, driven both by his passion for gardening and by the wish to create something “for the pleasure of the eye” and “for the purpose of having subjects to paint.”
He replaced the vegetable plots in front of the house with flower beds, then acquired a neighbouring parcel of land beside a small river, where he obtained permission to divert the stream and dig a pond for aquatic plants. There he planted water lilies, irises, willows and seasonal flowers, and added the Japanese-style wooden bridge that would become one of his most recognisable motifs.
For Monet, the garden offered an inexhaustible source of inspiration. Gradually, it came to replace the French landscapes, monuments, and city views that had occupied him for years, becoming the subject to which he returned in more than 250 paintings.
Monet in his garden at Giverny
Details of the present lot
Details of the present lot
In the early years of the series, Monet still set the pond within a wider garden setting, often centring his compositions on the Japanese bridge. Over time, however, he lowered his gaze to the water’s surface, creating a more radical vision of shifting reflections and dissolving forms.
The present Nymphéas was painted in 1907, during an especially productive spell. After spending the winter retouching the previous year’s paintings in his studio, he returned to the garden as soon as the weather allowed. From April to September, he became so absorbed in the work that he wrote only six letters, far fewer than usual for him.
Monet and his dealer Paul Durand-Ruel had originally planned to unveil the Nymphéas paintings that year, but the artist repeatedly postponed the show. Still “full of fire and confidence,” as he told Durand-Ruel, he was determined to keep working.
Water Lily Pond (1900) | Art Institute of Chicago (Currently on view at Hong Kong Museum of Art)
Water Lilies (1906) | Art Institute of Chicago (Currently on view at Hong Kong Museum of Art)
“Here all goes well,” he finally reported to Durand-Ruel in early autumn. “I have worked, and I am still working, with passion.” Pleased with what he had achieved, Monet invited his dealer to Giverny to see the latest paintings. “They are still a sort of groping research,” he claimed, “but I think that they are among my best efforts.”
Monet developed two distinct groups of water-lily paintings in 1907. The first, which includes this canvas and a closely related work now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, was painted in the morning or early afternoon, with open water lilies floating among soft reflections of foliage and light. The second, made closer to evening, is darker, more vertical, and more dramatic in contrast.
In the present painting, the lower half of the composition is awash with blues and purples, with the tones of the water echoed in the pale lily flowers. In the upper half, unseen trees cast their reflections across the pond in greens and pinks, as Monet moves between long, fluid brushstrokes and passages of textured impasto. The effect is one of tonal subtlety, lending the canvas the sense of tranquillity that defines Monet’s early Nymphéas.
The present lot
Nymphéas (1907) | Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Nymphéas (1907) | The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Nymphéas, temps gris (1907) | Sold: £30,059,000 (US$36.8 million), Christie's London, 2022
When the exhibition finally opened in May 1909, it proved well worth the wait. Forty-eight views of the lily pond were shown, the largest Monet had ever exhibited from a single series; the present painting was no. 28. Critics marvelled at how ethereal and nearly abstract the pictures appeared, even in comparsions with Picasso and Braque’s latest Cubist experiments.
After the exhibition, Monet entered a prolonged pause in his work that lasted nearly five years. Drained by the intense labour leading up to the show and soon beset by a series of personal tragedies, he barely picked up his brushes. Only in the spring of 1914 did he return to the water garden in earnest.
Although Monet completed well over a hundred new paintings of the lily pond between 1914 and his death in 1926, he kept the vast majority of these late views in his studio, neither exhibiting them nor offering them for sale. The series culminated in the Grandes Décorations, twenty-two mural-sized canvases that he finished just months before his death and donated to the French State.
At auction, the record for the series remains Nymphéas en fleur (Water Lilies in Bloom), circa 1914-17, from the Rockefeller Collection, which sold for US$84.7 million at Christie’s New York in 2018.
Nymphéas, Grandes décorations (1914-26) | Installed in the Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris
Nymphéas en fleur (Water Lilies in Bloom) (circa 1914-1917) | Sold: US$84.7 million, Christie's New York, 2018
Lot 106 | Mark Rothko (1903 - 1970) | Untitled, oil and watercolour on paper mounted on linen
Executed in 1959
75.2 x 55.2 cm
Provenance:
- Marlborough Gallery, Inc., New York
- Louise Ferrari, Houston (acquired from the above in 1969)
- Marlborough Galleria d'Arte, Rome
- Nicolo Leonardi, Milan (acquired from the above in 1971)
- Alberto Galimberti, Milan (acquired from the above in 1975)
- Barbara Annis, Inc., New York
- Dr. Donald Cole, New York (acquired from the above in 1983)
- John Herring, New York
- Solomon & Company Fine Art, New York
- Private Collection, Canada
- Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York
- Private Collection, New York (acquired from the above in 2007)
- Acquired from the above in 2016 by the present owner
Estimate: £4,000,000 - 6,000,000
Hammer Price: £7,400,000
Sold: £9,020,000
Taking second place in the sale was Mark Rothko's untitled color-field painting on paper from 1959, which realised £9 million (US$12 million).
The Abstract Expressionist built his mature work around large, luminous expanses of colour intended to induce a meditative emotional response. Here, he first covers the entire sheet with a red ground and then overlays it with a broad field of warm, golden yellow. Seen up close, small areas where the red still flickers through give the surface a subtle inner glow.
Fresh to auction and recently included in the National Gallery of Art’s major exhibition Mark Rothko: Paintings on Paper, the work drew a ten-minute bidding battle before hammering at £7.4 million, above its high estimate of £6 million – a strong result for a work on paper, a medium that typically commands lower prices.
The price follows the strong momentum for Rothko in the New York May sales, where two of his large‑scale colour‑field oils dominated headlines. At Christie’s, Agnes Gund’s No. 15 (Two Greens and Red Stripe) achieved US$98.4 million, setting a new auction record for the artist, while Browns and Blacks in Reds sold for US$85.8 million at Sotheby’s, the second-highest price ever achieved for his work.
No. 15 (Two Greens and Red Stripe) from the collection of former MoMA President Agnes Gund sold for US$98.4 million in New York in May, setting an auction record for Mark Rothko
Browns and Blacks in Reds sold for US$85.8 million at Sotheby’s, the second-highest price ever achieved for Rothko at auction
Other Highlight Lots
Overall, Sotheby's Modern & Contemporary Evening Auction saw 34 of 40 lots sold, achieving a total of £97.05 million (US$128.1 million) and an 85% sell-through rate. Monet’s Nymphéas alone accounted for nearly 42% of the evening’s total.
Bidding was generally measured, with few instances of spirited bidding and several works hammering below the estimate. Asian buyers acquired David Hockney’s Two Chairs and a Wooden Spoon and George Condo’s In Chinatown, each of which sold for £2.16 million.
Lot 137 | Banksy (b. 1973) | Love Is In The Air (life size), spray paint and oil on canvas
Executed in 2011
210 x 210 cm
Estimate: £3,500,000 - 5,500,000
Hammer Price: £5,200,000
Sold: £6,434,000
Lot 117 | Wassily Kandinsky (1866 - 1944) | Fragment zu Improvisation II (Trauermarsch) (Detail of Improvisation II (Funeral March)), oil on board
Executed in 1909
98.1 x 70.8 cm
Provenance:
- Gabriele Münter, Munich
- Franz Resch, Gauting
- Hugo Gouthier, Rome
- Marlborough Fine Art, London
- E. Meyer, Zurich
- Leonard Hutton Galleries, New York (acquired by 1977)
- Mr and Mrs Richard Severin Fuld, New York
- Acquavella Galleries, New York (acquired from the above in 1978)
- Private Collection (acquired from the above in 1979)
- Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1984
Estimate: £4,000,000 - 6,000,000
Hammer Price: £4,100,000
Sold: £5,036,186
Lot 110 | Egon Schiele (1890 - 1918) | Tote Stadt IV (Blick über Dächer auf Häuserfassaden des Krumauer Ringplatzes) (Dead City IV (View across Roofs of Ringplatz Facades in Krumau)), oil on panel
Executed in 1912
36.8 x 29.3 cm
Provenance:
- Emil Toepfer, Vienna
- Otto Nirenstein, Vienna (acquired by 1927)
- Neue Galerie, Vienna (acquired from the above by 1930 and until at least 1948)
- Private Collection, Austria
- Dorotheum, Vienna, 15 December 1978, lot 1492 (consigned by the above)
- Private Collection, Switzerland (acquired from the above sale)
- Thence by descent to the present owner
Estimate: £2,500,000 - 3,500,000
Hammer Price: £3,600,000
Sold: £4,482,000
Lot 124 | Mikhail Larionov (1881 - 1964) | Head of a Soldier, oil on canvas
Executed in 1911
69.5 x 50 cm
Provenance:
- Waldemar George, Paris (acquired by 1961)
- Leonard Hutton Galleries, New York (acquired by 1971)
- Sotheby's, London, 2 April 1987, lot 611 (consigned by the above)
- Acquired from the above sale by the present owner
Estimate: £800,000 - 1,200,000
Hammer Price: £2,500,000
Sold: £3,140,000
Lot 114 | Pablo Picasso (1881 - 1973) | Tête de femme, oil on canvas
Executed on 5 January 1963
65 x 54.4 cm
Provenance:
- Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris
- Samuel Kootz Gallery, New York (acquired by 1965)
- Donald and Jean Stralem, New York
- Sotheby’s, New York, 8 May 1995, lot 38 (consigned by the above)
- Acquired from the above sale by the present owner
Estimate: £3,000,000 - 5,000,000
Hammer Price: £1,920,000
Sold: £2,432,400
Lot 112 | David Hockney (1937 - 2026) | Two Chairs and a Wooden Spoon, July 1988, oil on canvas
Executed in July 1988
61 x 61 cm
Provenance:
- Knoedler Gallery, London
- Acquired from the above in 1988 by the present owner
Estimate: £1,200,000 - 1,800,000
Hammer Price: £1,700,000
Sold: £2,164,000
Lot 105 | Marlow Moss (1889-1958) | White, Yellow and Black, oil on canvas (Auction record for the artist)
Executed in 1953
69 x 69.2 cm
Provenance:
- N. Nijhoff, Biggekerke
- Gimpel & Hanover Galerie, Zurich
- Mr. and Ms. Dr. Kräyenbühl, Zurich (acquired from the above in December 1973)
- Private Collection, Switzerland (acquired by descent from the above)
- Christie’s, Amsterdam, 10 December 2013, lot 20
- Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
Estimate: £450,000 - 650,000
Hammer Price: £920,000
Sold: £1,177,600
Auction Details:
Auction House: Sotheby's London
Sale: Modern and Contemporary Evening Sale
Date: 24 June 2026
Number of Lots: 40
Sold: 34
Unsold: 6
Sale Rate: 85%
Sale Total: £97,225,600 (US$128,823,920)