Wall Art News: Monet Poplar To Fetch $25M

"Les Peupliers" 1891, by Claude Monet

One canvas wall art from Claude Monet’s famous Poplars series will be auctioned off at Christies’s in May this year and is expected to fetch between $25 million to $30 million, said the auction house on Friday.

The painting “Les Peupliers” is the biggest canvas from the series of poplar trees that the artist created during his years at Giverny. The canvas wall art is being sold by an Asian art collector who bought the painting at an auction in 2000 for only a little over $7 million.

The return of the art market last year, came roaring back after a decline in 2008. Artist’s records were being broken and paintings sold over the $100 million mark. Auction houses are back in business again as buyer’s confidence returns.

The “Les Peupliers” will mark the first time in over a decade that a major masterpiece from the 1890s poplar tree series will be auctioned.

Conor Jordan, head of Christie’s Impressionist and Modern Art department said, “We anticipate great enthusiasm from many collectors, dealers and museum directors who have been eager for a quintessential Monet scene such as this.”

The value of Claude Monet’s work has steadily risen the past season. Monet’s auction record is $80.4 million which was set in May 2008 for “Le Bassin aux Nympheas” from the waterlilies series. Other factors driving prices up are a limited supply of masterpieces and confidence in the art buyer’s market.

Most of Monet’s poplar canvas wall art hang in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the London Tate Gallery, and Tokyo’s National Museum of Art.

Monet painting it in the summer of 1891 after negotiating with a woodcutter not to cut down a row of poplar trees near the river close to his home until he finished painting the canvas wall art.

The “Les Peupliers” will be auctioned of in New York on May 4 after a touring London and Moscow.