$NZ3.78M for Monet work

Press, 26 June 1987, Page 8

$NZ3.78M for Monet work

NZPA-Reuter Paris A painting of chrysanthemums by the impressionist, Claude Monet, fetched a French record sum of 13.8 million francs (SNZ3.7B million) at a Paris auction house. “Bouquet de fleurs,” (Bouquet of flowers), painted by the French father of impressionism in 1878, was sold to a mystery international art collector during a sale at the Hotel Drouot auction

house. The sale broke the record for a painting sold in France, which stood at 10 million francs (SNZ2.7O million), ’ for another Monet work. Officials at the auction rooms said Japanese buyers were in evidence at this week’s sale of modem art, and that an anonymous Japanese buyer bought a work by the British impressionist, Alfred Sisley, for five million francs ($NZ1,385,800).

Monet’s 54cm by 72cm oil-on-canvas painting showed a bunch of white chrysanthemums in a red, cloth-covered bowl. It was bought by Moise Dreyfus at the end of the last century and had been in his family’s possession since then, the officials said.

Monet, who died in 1926, gave a name to an already existing type of painting in the 1870 s with his work “Impression, soleil levant” (Impression, sunrise).