MONET! MONET! MONET!

Sold for over $100m, French masterpiece shatters world record for Impressionist art

A CLAUDE Monet painting has broken a world record after it sold for more than $100million at auction.

The oil painting Meules, above, from the artist’s Haystacks series, went under the hammer at Sotheby’s in New York for $110.7million (£86.1million). The price set a new world record for a work by Monet – and was the first example of Impressionist art to cross the $100million threshold at auction.

It was also around 44 times the $2.5million it raised in 1986 when it was last sold.

According to the auction house, six bidders battled for more than eight minutes to acquire the work, although the identity of the eventual buyer was not revealed. The huge price ‘signalled the enduring value and popularity of the French Impressionist master’, a spokesman for Sotheby’s said.

The previous auction record for a Monet was $84.7million (£65million) for one of his water lilies paintings last year.

Meules was acquired from Monet’s dealer in the 1890s by Potter and Bertha Palmer, Chicago socialites and Impressionist collectors. It was handed down through their family before being bought at auction in 1986 by a private collector. It is one of four works from the series in private hands. Seventeen are in museums around the world.