Monet's water-lily masterpiece may net up to £40m at auction

One of Monet's celebrated water-lily paintings is to be auctioned in London for a price expected to reach up to £40m, it was announced yesterday.

The painting – dating back a century and from his most famous series of works – will be part of the most valuable art auction yet to take place in the city later this month.

The impressionist and modern art at Christie's sale also features a "blue period" Picasso, also tipped to go for up to 40m, after being withdrawn from sale four years ago.

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Together with works by Magritte, Klimt and Van Gogh, the sale on June 23 is expected to raise up to 230m.

The art market has seen prices soar in recent months. An equivalent sale at Christie's in New York last month saw the highest price ever paid at auction for an artwork when a Picasso masterpiece went for 70m.

Monet's 1906 painting Nympheas was one of many he painted in his water garden at Giverny with the pond and lilies depicted in often huge scale.

It is the largest of nine surviving works from that year. He would often destroy with which he was not satisfied.

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And it is one of only five which formed part of his famed display of monumental water-lilies at the Musee de l'Orangerie in Paris in 1909. A rare study for that exhibition sold for 41m in London in 2008, a new world record for a Monet.

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