By the last two decades of his life, Monet had largely left the concerns of Impressionism behind and devoted himself almost entirely to the water garden he had cultivated at his home in Giverny. From it came roughly 250 canvases, now counted among the most radical and influential works of his career.
Around 200 belong to the celebrated water-lily series; the rest depict the garden’s other features: the Japanese bridge, the weeping willows and wisteria, and dense clumps of irises, agapanthus and daylilies along the sloping banks.
This October, during Art Basel Paris, one of those late garden paintings – a monumental Iris (circa 1924-25) previously known only from a photograph – will be offered at Sotheby’s. Measuring nearly 160 by 180 cm, it is the largest example from the Iris series remaining in private hands and carries an estimate of €22-30 million (US$25-35 million), the highest ever placed on a painting offered at auction in France.
Iris will headline Le Temps retrouvé: The Schlumberger Collection, Sotheby’s 28-lot single-owner sale dedicated to Jeanne Schlumberger, an heir to the French oilfield services fortune. Publicly unveiled at Sotheby’s Paris, the work will travel to Hong Kong and New York ahead of its auction on 22 October.
Lot 4 | Claude Monet (1840 - 1926) | Iris, oil on canvas
Executed circa 1924-25
159.6 x 180 cm
Provenance:
- Estate of the artist
- Michel Monet, Giverny (son of the artist; by descent from the above)
- Galerie Katia Granoff, Paris (acquired from the above)
- Schlumberger Collection, Paris (acquired from the above)
Estimate: €22,000,000 - 30,000,000
Irises had long held a particular fascination for Monet – a flower he knew well from his collection of ukiyo-e woodblock prints, including works by Hokusai. At Giverny, he planted them along the paths leading to the house and the Japanese bridge, as well as in broad banks behind the house.
The horticulturalist Georges Truffaut, a regular visitor to the garden, left a vivid record of their abundance: “The edges of the pond are thickly covered with irises of every kind. In the spring, there are Iris sibirica and Virginian irises with their long petals and velvety texture; later on the Japanese irises and the Kaempferi irises grow here in quantity.”
Monet at work on his water-lily cycle at Giverny, 1920s
The iris path in Monet's garden at Giverny
Monet painted around 20 canvases of the irises in his garden at Giverny between 1914 and 1925, many of which are now in major museum collections, including the National Gallery in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Art Institute of Chicago.
The earliest of these – painted between 1914 and 1917 – formed part of Monet's experimentation around the Grandes Décorations, the celebrated mural-sized water-lily cycle now housed at the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris. Although he appears at first to have considered incorporating irises into the ensemble, he ultimately treated them as an independent subject, exploring their possibilities through varied formats, compositions, and colour harmonies.
One of the most striking features of these paintings is Monet's use of unexpected viewpoints. In the example now in the National Gallery, the composition looks down onto the winding garden path and flower beds. In Irises at the Art Institute of Chicago, the viewpoint becomes more ambiguous: without a discernible horizon or clear sense of depth, the viewer seems both above and submerged in a water-like surface, across which flowers and leaves appear to float.
Irises (circa 1914-17), 200.7 × 149.9 cm | Collection of the National Gallery, London
Irises (circa 1914-17), 200 × 200.7 cm | Collection of the Art Institute of Chicago
The present Iris belongs to the final group of the series, painted in 1924-25, when the Grandes Décorations were nearing completion. By then, cataracts had severely impaired Monet’s vision for years, and even after surgery in 1923 his sight remained altered.
Here, Monet sets the viewer low and close to the water's edge. Tall, sword-like leaves surge across the left half of the canvas, while blooms in yellow, white and violet push forward from below. To the right, the lily pond's surface opens into a near-abstract field of blues, greys, and pale yellows, its reflections laid in with broad, swirling strokes.
It is the only work of this scale from the series to remain outside a museum collection, and its nearest counterpart is the canvas at the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris, closely related in composition and slightly smaller.
Iris jaunes, around 130 x 152 cm | Collection of Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris
The present lot, 159.6 x 180 cm
Details of the present lot
Details of the present lot
Apart from the Grandes Décorations, the majority of Monet’s paintings from the last twelve years of his life remained essentially unknown until after the Second World War. Only in the post-war decades, as audiences schooled in Abstract Expressionism began to grasp their gestural freedom and radical ambition, were these canvases fully recognised.
Russian-born Paris dealer Katia Granoff was among the first to champion them, promoting Monet's final works in America at a time when they attracted little interest in France. Having acquired Monet's studio holdings from his son in the 1950s, she helped place major paintings in leading American museums and private collections.
Jeanne Schlumberger worked in close partnership with Granoff over four decades, and it was through the dealer that she acquired Iris, alongside other late works by Monet offered in the single-owner sale, including a weeping willow canvas. Together, the works in the collection are estimated in excess of €40 million.
First recorded in Daniel Wildenstein's catalogue raisonné, Iris leads the sale with an estimate of €22-30 million and could set a new auction record for a painting sold in France. The record is now held by Matisse's Les coucous, tapis bleu et rose, which fetched €35.9 million at the 2009 Yves Saint Laurent sale at Christie's Paris, while the auction record for an iris-themed Monet stands at £10.8 million (around €15 million at the time), set at Christie's London in 2015.
Jeanne Schlumberger (1889-1983)
Henri Matisse, Les coucous, tapis bleu et rose (1911) | Sold: €35,905,000, Christie's Paris, 2009
Iris mauves (1914-1917), 200.5 x 100.5 cm | Sold: £10,834,500, Christie's London, 2015
Other Highlight Lots:
Lot 8 | Claude Monet (1840 - 1926) | Saule pleureur or L'Arbre de feu, oil on canvas
Executed circa 1918-19
100.3 x 80.5 cm
Provenance:
- Estate of the artist
- Michel Monet, Giverny (son of the artist; by descent from the above)
- Galerie Katia Granoff, Paris (acquired from the above)
- Schlumberger Collection, Paris (acquired from the above)
Estimate: €9,000,000 - 12,000,000
Lot 2 | Claude Monet (1840 - 1926) | La maison à travers les roses, oil on canvas
Executed circa 1925-26
65 x 92.5 cm
Provenance:
- Estate of the artist
- Michel Monet, Giverny (son of the artist; by descent from the above)
- Galerie Katia Granoff, Paris (acquired from the above)
- Schlumberger Collection, Paris (acquired from the above)
Estimate: €2,000,000 - 3,000,000
Lot 5 | Claude Monet (1840 - 1926) | La Seine à Vernon, l'arbre, oil on canvas
Executed in 1894
49.3 x 65 cm
Provenance:
- Estate of the artist
- Michel Monet, Giverny (son of the artist; by descent from the above)
- Galerie Katia Granoff, Paris (acquired from the above)
- Schlumberger Collection, Paris (acquired from the above)
Estimate: €1,200,000 - 1,800,000
Lot 6 | Gustave Moreau (1826 - 1898) | Rêve d'Orient, watercolour and gouache on paper
Executed in 1881
38.6 x 26.9 cm
Provenance:
- Alfred Chessé, Nantes (acquired directly from the artist)
- Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 27 February 1907, lot 51 (consigned by the above)
- Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Paris (no. 15 798, acquired at the above sale)
- Baron de Turkeim, Paris
- Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 28 May 1910, lot 65 (consigned by the above)
- Palais Galliera, Paris, 17 March 1971, lot 15
- Collection Schlumberger, Paris (acquired at the above sale)
Estimate: €600,000 - 800,000
Lot 1 | Camille Claudel (1864–1943) | La Valse, petit modèle, bronze
Conceived in 1895, this example is number one of four known casts made in 1905 in this size by Eugène Blot
Height: 22.7 cm
Estimate: €400,000 - 600,000
Auction Details:
Auction House: Sotheby's Paris
Sale: La Collection Schlumberger. Le Temps retrouvé
Date and Time: 22 October 2026 | 6:00 pm (Paris local time)
Number of Lots: 28