Claude Monet - Posthumous Sales

Posthumous Sales

In 2004, London, the Parliament, Effects of Sun in the Fog (Londres, le Parlement, trouée de soleil dans le brouillard) (1904), sold for US$20.1 million. In 2006, the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society published a paper providing evidence that these were painted in situ at St Thomas' Hospital over the river Thames.

Falaises près de Dieppe (Cliffs near Dieppe) has been stolen on two separate occasions: once in 1998 (in which the museum's curator was convicted of the theft and jailed for five years and two months along with two accomplices) and most recently in August 2007. It was recovered in June 2008.

Monet's Le Pont du chemin de fer à Argenteuil, an 1873 painting of a railway bridge spanning the Seine near Paris, was bought by an anonymous telephone bidder for a record $ 41.4 million at Christie's auction in New York on 6 May 2008. The previous record for his painting stood at $ 36.5 million. Just a few weeks later, Le bassin aux nymphéas (from the water lilies series) sold at Christie's 24 June 2008 auction in London, lot 19, for £36,500,000 ($71,892,376.34) (hammer price) or £40,921,250 ($80,451,178) with fees, nearly doubling the record for the artist and representing one of the top 20 highest prices paid for a painting at the time.