Claude Monet’s 1888 painting Moulin de Limetz will be put up for auction at an upcoming 20th Century Evening Sale organized by Christie’s in May. The artwork is expected to fetch a price between $18 million and $25 million.
Moulin de Limetz shows a grain mill at Limetz-Villez village, Giverny, France. It is one of two paintings with the same subject Monet created in 1888. The second one was sold in 2023 at an auction for $25.6 million.
Monet moved to Giverny with his family in 1883 after seeing the place through a train window. He lived and worked there until his death in 1926. His final resting place is in the Giverny church cemetery.
According to Christie’s, Monet sold Moulin de Limetz to an art dealer in 1890, and the painting switched hands several times before being acquired by art collectors Joseph S. and Ethel B. Atha from Kansas City in 1936. It remained in the possession of the Atha family until 1986 before making its way to the Kansas City-based Nelson-Atkins Museum in the form of a “partial bequest”. The funds from the sale of the painting will benefit future art acquisitions by the museum.
“Painted in 1888, this example presents a prologue to Monet’s development into series, which would become a defining tenet of his late career,” Christie’s says about Moulin de Limetz in its press release. “Featuring dazzling kaleidoscopic light that reflects and sparkles off the gently flowing water and shimmers off the rustling foliage, Monet’s painterly achievement radiates color with depth and complexity through layers of thick, rich and sumptuous pigment.”