At Christie's sale of Impressionist and Modern art in New York on Tuesday buyers paid $285 million (€205m) for just 47 paintings.
The top lot was Nymphéas by French Impressionist painter Claude Monet, for which bidder from Asia paid $27 million (€19.5 m). The oil-on-canvas, dating from 1907, is one of 250 images Monet made of the water-lilies in his famous garden at Giverny. The painting came from the private collection of Huguette Clark, an American copper heiress, who died, aged 104, in New York in 2011.
She had reputedly bought the painting in 1930 and hung it in her Fifth Avenue apartment. It was unseen by her for decades as she was hospitalised for the final 20 years of her life. She left a $300million fortune including a lavish collection of art and mansions across America where staff had reputedly not seen her since the 1950s.
