Sotheby’s London to Offer The Most Valuable Work by Claude Monet Ever to Come at Auction in Europe
-Exceptional Water Lily Painting by Claude Monet to Lead Sotheby’s Modern and Contemporary Evening Sale in London With £30-40 Million Estimate
– The Highest Estimate Ever Placed on a Work by Monet to Come to Auction in Europe –
-Alongside An Early Portrait of the Artist’s First Wife,
-One of Only a Handful Featuring Camille Monet Ever to Appear at Auction
“Seen side by side, this extraordinary ‘reunion’ brings together two defining works by Claude Monet. Painted in 1870, the portrait of Camille reads almost as a manifesto of his pioneering plein air approach, and is remarkable for its freshness, spontaneity and immediacy of vision. Set beside the water lilies – arguably Monet’s defining and most recognisable body of work – painted almost half a century later, one can trace the extraordinary arc of his artistic evolution. In many ways, the painting of Camille reveals the origins of everything that followed, visually laying the foundations for all the revolutionary language Monet would go on to create, one that would ultimately alter the course of Modern art.”
Helena Newman
Sotheby’s Chairman, Europe & Chairman, Impressionist & Modern Art Worldwide
Media release posted Sunday 14 June,2026
LONDON, 11 June 2026 – Two exceptional works by Claude Monet, painted nearly four decades apart, will headline Sotheby’s Modern and Contemporary Evening auction in London on 24 June. Together, the paintings encapsulate both the origins and culmination of Monet’s revolutionary artistic practice, drawing on two of his most enduring sources of inspiration: his water garden at Giverny, and his beloved wife Camille.
Leading the sale is Nymphéas (1907), a lyrically ethereal and luminous view of Monet’s famed water lily pond at Giverny, carrying the highest estimate ever placed on a work by the artist to come to auction in Europe (est. £30-40m). It is joined by Camille assise sur la plage à Trouville, an intimate early portrait of Monet’s beloved wife Camille on the Normandy coast during the summer of 1870 (est. £7-10m).
Offered from the same private collection, the two paintings share distinguished American provenance. Nymphéas remained in the collection of renowned patron and collector Anne Bass for nearly four decades, while Camille assise sur la plage à Trouville formerly belonged to Peggy and David Rockefeller. Having resided in major American collections for generations, both works will now be presented in London for the first time.
Seen together, the paintings offer a compelling through-line across Monet’s artistic evolution – one that would ultimately set to alter the course of art history. Painted on the cusp of Impressionism, the Trouville portrait captures a fleeting, wind-swept moment with striking immediacy, while Nymphéas, executed at the height of Monet’s powers, reflects his profound reimagining of landscape, light, and perception.
Together with the Lewis Collection and other major works, this remarkable pairing arrives at a defining moment for the London art market, bringing an exceptional concentration of museum-quality works to auction, including some of the highest-value works ever offered in Europe presented under one roof.
Painted at a landmark moment during Monet’s career, Nymphéas belongs to the pivotal group of water lily paintings executed between 1904 and 1909, a period during which the artist radically transformed the language of landscape painting. Dispensing with the horizon line and dissolving spatial boundaries, Monet rendered the surface of his pond as a boundless field of light, colour, and reflection.
His water garden at Giverny offered an infinite array of shifting effects and hence, for the artist, an inexhaustible source of inspiration, presenting subtle tensions between surface and depth, near and far, permanence and transience – all unified within an ever-changing, luminous atmosphere.
CLAUDE MONET
Nymphéas (1907)
Estimate: £30-40 million
Nymphéas is executed in the highly coveted square format, a compositional innovation that proved critical to Monet’s artistic evolution.
By renouncing traditional landscape and portrait orientations, he abolished the horizon line entirely, intensifying the immersive, near-abstract quality of his water lilies while enabling an intimate and contemplative focus on floating vegetation and rippling reflections. The work signals a decisive departure from traditional landscape conventions and anticipates later developments in abstraction, exerting a profound influence on generations of artists, including figures such as Mark Rothko, whose work will be exhibited alongside this canvas in the sale.
Softly atmospheric and richly textured, the composition captures the delicate interplay between floating blossoms, reflected sky, and rippling water, blurring the distinction between the tangible and the ephemeral.
CLAUDE MONET
Camille assise sur la plage à Trouville (1870)
Estimate: £7-10 million
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