Dr Tony O'Reilly has confirmed he bought a canvas by the Impressionist painter, Claude Monet, for more than $24 million in a telephone bid to a New York auction last week.
This is the third-highest price paid for a work by the artist and probably the largest sum spent on a work of art by anyone in Ireland.
Painted between 1892 and 1894, Le Portail (Soleil) is one of a series produced by Monet of the facade of Rouen Cathedral.
Featured in an auction of Impressionist and modern art conducted by Sotheby's on May 10th, it carried a pre-sale estimate of $15-$20 million; including auctioneer's premiums, Dr O'Reilly paid $24,205,750.
One of Monet's water lily studies fetched $33 million in June 1998, while his Dans La Prairie made $24.2 million a decade earlier. Speaking yesterday on RTE Radio 1's Today with Pat Kenny, Dr O'Reilly said he planned to hang the painting with the rest of his collection at his home outside Dublin. However, he hoped it would go on public view "for a couple of months, next year or this year".
He described the purchase of the Monet as a "labour of love" because he had fallen in love with the painter's work while as a 14-year-old on a that French cycling holiday in 1950.