Sotheby’s will auction Claude Monet‘s Meules à Giverny (1893) in its modern art evening auction on May 15. The house has has estimated that the work sell for a sum “in excess of $30 million”.
The sunny landscape painting features a haystack in a tree-filled field. It was brought to the United States in 1895 by its first owner, the American landscape painter Dwight Blaney. According to Sotheby’s, the painting was immediately lent to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and has remained in the same private collection for decades.
Sotheby’s announcement also noted that the sale will take place five years after Monet’s Meules sold for $110.7 million at Sotheby’s, doubling its estimate and setting a record for the artist. That sum was the highest amount for any Impressionist piece sold at auction.
Meules à Giverny is one of several works being sold from the same private collection at the May 15 Sotheby’s sale. The others are Monet’s Bennecourt (1887), Pablo Picasso‘s Courses de taureaux (1901), Camille Pissarro‘s Paysage aux Pâtis, Pontoise, la moisson (1873), and Childe Hassam‘s View of Broadway and Fifth Avenue (1890). Sotheby’s did not supply a name for the seller.
Bennecourt was acquired from Monet by American painter John Singer Sargent. Its price estimate is $6 million–$8 million.
Pablo Picasso, Courses de taureaux, (1901). Courtesy of Sotheby’s.
Courses de taureaux is an early Picasso work depicting a classic Spanish bullfight. Per Sotheby’s, Picasso’s paintings of bullfights, a recurring subject across his vast oeuvre, do not appear often at auction.
When Sotheby’s last auctioned Courses de taureaux in London in 2003, the painting sold for £2.1 million ($3.6 million USD) on an estimate of £1.5 million–£2 million ($2.5 million–$3.3 million), according to Artnet’s sales database. Now, it is estimated to sell for between $5 million and $7 million.
Pissarro’s Paysage aux Pâtis, Pontoise, la moisson refers to a small town approximately 25 miles northwest of Paris. Its estimate is $2.5 million to $3.5 million.
Hassam’s View of Broadway and Fifth Avenue depicts the area around Madison Square Park “from the vantage point of the balcony at Hotel Bartholdi, on the corner of Broadway and 23rd Street.” When Sotheby’s last auctioned the work in New York in 1988, it sold for $1.15 million on an estimate of $500,000–$750,000, according to Artnet’s sales database. Sotheby’s latest estimate for the oil painting is $800,000–$1.2 million.
All five works have been guaranteed by the auction house.
“Assembled over four decades with meticulous care and attention, this collection stands as an expert guide to understanding the foundations of 20th century art,” Benjamin Doller, Sotheby’s chairman of the Americas, said in a statement.
