Dubai, United Arab Emirates (CNN) — $50 million is the estimated value of selling five of the works of one of the most famous impressionist painters in the world, French Claude Monet, at an auction organized by the British auction house Sosby.
These paintings reflect his 15-year transition to abstract painting, in March, according to Sosby House.
These works date back to before 1900, and give an idea of the artist’s development and artistic style of painting, before he painted his most famous paintings in the “Water Lilies” series, in the early twentieth century.
Helena Neumann, Head of Europe and the World Department of Impressionist and Contemporary Art at Sosby, said, “When looking at the chart of the artist’s evolution through to his work The Watermelon, these five paintings in a remarkable way capture the story of Monet, the father of contemporary art.”
Estimated to sell for between $25 and $27 million, Les Demoiselles de Giverny depicts one of the Paris painter’s most memorable and iconic scenes, the Meulettes that are more metaphorical than the haystacks upon which we lie in his final works. Others, according to Sosby. It is the most valuable of the group of his five paintings.
Another painting, infested with chrysanthemums, is titled “Chrysanthemums” series, probably inspired by the legendary Japanese painter Hokusai and printmaker who painted “The Big Wave in Kanagawa.” Monet was so impressed that he bought his “Big Flowers”, and was so amazed by Japan that art prints adorned the walls of his home.
The auction house said that the “Glaçons, environs de Bennecourt”, included in the collection, shows Monet’s path until he reached the stage of drawing tulips, according to Sosby. This painting reveals the effect of thick snow and ice on the face of the Seine, and the artist’s depiction of the ice floating on the river is no different from the painting of flowers on the water in his works he painted a few years later, according to Sosby.
The paintings are on display at Sosby’s galleries in New York, Hong Kong, Taipei and London before they are sold on March 2.