(Paris) A rare painting by Claude Monet, entitled The Limetz mill and estimated at between 18 and 25 million dollars, will be exhibited in Paris from Friday to Monday, before being auctioned in mid-May in New York at Christie’s, the auction house announced on Wednesday.
This painting painted in 1888 depicts a mill in Limetz, near Giverny, in Normandy (western France), where Monet painted his famous water lilies, with a riverside and tree branches reflected in the foreground. the water.
“There are only two views and two paintings of this mill at different times of the day,” explained Antoine Lebouteiller, director of the impressionist and modern department at Christie’s France.
The second painting was sold at Sotheby’s in November for $25 million and is in the Barberini Museum in Potsdam (Germany), he added.
“They set up the milestones for the series of the Rouen cathedral and the haystacks that Monet would begin from 1890,” he explained.
Purchased in 1891 by the Parisian gallery Durand-Ruel, the painting which will be auctioned in New York was sold to a private dealer in 1902, then bought from his descendants by the American subsidiary of the same gallery specializing in impressionism in 1936.
It was then sold to a family named Atha, who donated two-thirds of it to the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City, United States, in 1986. The two owners are reselling it today in particular with a view to future acquisitions for the museum, according to the specialist.
The sale will be held as the Impressionist movement celebrates its 150th anniversary, with events all over France, and as Claude Monet (1840-1926) “continues to eclipse all his counterparts with ever-increasing demand”, according to Mr. Lebouteiller .
Over the last five years, “seven of the ten highest results at international art auctions, all periods and techniques combined, have gone to him,” he explained.