NEW YORK. - A large-scale waterlilies oil by Claude Monet from the collection of producer Ray Stark will be auctioned in May. A respected art collector, Stark served on the board of trustees at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which received much of his renowned art collection upon his death earlier this year.

"Le Bassin aux Nympheas" is one of many Impressionist and modern works in the collection to be auctioned at Sotheby’s on May 6, the auction house said. It is expected to fetch $9 million to $12 million.

Other paintings from the collection include works by Georges Braque, Auguste Rodin, Henry Moore and Fernand Leger.

Claude Monet was born in Paris on 14th November 1840. Five years later his family moved to Le Havre where, subsequently, his adolescent caricatures were exhibited next to the work of his future mentor Eugène Boudin (1824-1897). The elder artist encouraged Monet to paint directly from nature: “It was as if a veil had suddenly been torn from my eyes. I understood. I grasped what painting was capable of being”. 

 Monet studied for one year at the Académie Suisse in Paris before he was posted on a year’s military service in Algeria. He would later place great emphasis on this time spent abroad, “I did not realize it at first; it was not until later that the impressions of color and light which I had received sorted themselves out; but the germ of my future research was there.”