HONG KONG.- Christie’s will present Claude Monet’s seminal Nymphéas. Created 125 years ago, it had remained in the Monet family for many years and is now being offered from a distinguished private collection. This masterpiece is making its first appearance at auction and is one of the highlights of the 20th/ 21st Century Inaugural Evening Sale at The Henderson on 26 September. It is one of the very first of Monet’s works to take as its subject, his beloved water-lily pond at his Giverny home. Notably, four other works from this pioneering Nymphéas series are owned by renowned museums worldwide today, including the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Kagoshima City Museum of Art, and the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome, underscoring the exceptional rarity and calibre of this painting. Standing at a remarkable 73.3 x 101cm, this celebrated work is offered with an estimate of HK$200,000,000 – 280,000,000 / US$ 25,000,000 – 35,000,000.

Cristian Albu, Deputy Chairman, Head of 20th/21st Century Art, Christie’s Asia Pacific, added: “We are proud to present the auction debut of this Nymphéas masterpiece by Claude Monet at Christie’s Inaugural Evening Sale at The Henderson. As one of the few remaining rare works from Monet’s pioneering first Water Lilies series that is still in a private collection, with the rest residing in museums across the world, this painting is a true singular treasure. Through our unparalleled global expertise, we are privileged to present this seminal painting to our discerning collectors in Asia, catering to the surging demands for iconic Western artworks of the highest calibre.”

Adrien Meyer, Global Head of Private Sales and Co-Chairman of Impressionist & Modern Art at Christie's, commented: “Claude Monet's Nymphéas are among the most influential images in modern art history. These Nymphéas reveal the pictorial innovations that would define his celebrated series. Presented for the first time at auction, it is no wonder that half of the paintings of this first series are already held in public institutions.”

This work and the seven other paintings from Monet’s first Nymphéas series vary in format, size, colour, and handling as Monet revelled in the myriad of pictorial potentials of this novel motif. Immersing the viewer in a shimmering aquatic world, Nymphéas is a sublime work from this pioneering series, marking Monet’s early explorations of the theme that would come to dominate his production in the twentieth century. This painting introduces one of the most important and radical aspects of Monet’s Nymphéas – the elimination of a horizon line. His tightly focused scene plunges the viewer into the centre of the pond, removing all other peripheral details to focus entirely on the constantly shifting relationships between water, atmosphere and light that transformed the pond’s surface with each passing moment. These pictorial qualities would become central to every phase of Monet’s Nymphéas series and served as key influences on subsequent generations of artists.