Monet painting hidden from public for a century sells for €50 million in Paris

A Claude Monet painting that spent decades inside a private Paris mansion has sold for €50 million, making it the most expensive artwork ever sold at auction in France. The painting, which had never been publicly exhibited, attracted huge interest when it went under the hammer at Sotheby’s in Paris on Thursday, October 22.

The sale price for Iris, painted in 1924–1925, includes the buyer’s fees. Before the auction, it had been valued at between €22 million and €30 million, meaning the final figure comfortably exceeded expectations. For art lovers, the sale offers a rare chance to see the market put a price on a work that has remained out of public view. Despite Monet’s worldwide fame, this particular painting was known mainly through a black-and-white photograph rather than exhibitions or gallery displays.

A painting that never left the family home

Measuring almost 1.6 metres high and 1.8 metres wide, Iris depicts flowers in the loose, expressive style that became a defining feature of Monet’s later work. It was painted at Giverny, the French village where the artist created the gardens that inspired some of his best-known paintings.  The canvas remained in the Schlumberger family’s Paris home after being acquired by Jeanne Schlumberger, an art collector who bought it through the Paris gallery of Katia Granoff.

It passed through the artist’s family before reaching the collection, according to the painting’s auction history.  Its first public appearance came ahead of the sale, when it was displayed as part of the collection’s unveiling in September. Until then, the public had not had the opportunity to see the work in colour. The auction room reportedly held its breath for nearly 45 minutes as bidders competed by telephone, before the final price was reached.

Once dismissed by some critics as unfinished or erratic, these works are now recognised for their influence on later modern art. Iris belongs to this final period of his career.  The sale also comes in the year marking 100 years since Monet’s death on December 5, 1926. Two exhibitions in Paris are commemorating the anniversary, bringing renewed attention to the artist and his work. 

Other major works in the auction

The painting was the headline lot in a sale of 28 works from the Schlumberger collection, which brought together pieces by several major artists. The collection had been assembled over decades by Jeanne Schlumberger and included Impressionist and modern art that had largely remained out of public view. 

Three other Monet paintings were included in the auction, among them Saule Pleureur, or Weeping Willow, which had been estimated at between €9 million and €12 million.  Three paintings by Paul Cézanne, however, were withdrawn shortly before the sale. Classified as national treasures, the works are being considered for acquisition by the city of Aix-en-Provence, Cézanne’s birthplace, with support from France’s culture ministry. The aim is to bring them back to the area associated with the artist. 

The result for Iris sets a new benchmark for art sold at auction in France, turning a painting that spent decades in a private home into the country’s most expensive auctioned artwork. Its journey from a family collection to the public auction room has also given audiences their first chance to see a work that, until recently, was known largely from a monochrome photograph.