Masterpieces by Monet, Signac, Degas and Leger up for auction in London

Leading the group is Claude Monet with “Maison de Jardinier” (1884), created during a ten-week stay on the Ligurian Riviera. The painting depicts Francesco Moreno’s famous garden in Bordighera and is estimated at up to £8.5 million. According to Sotheby’s, works from Monet’s Italian trip rarely appear on the market, while many of the most prized pieces are held in large museums such as the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Dallas Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Completing the quartet are Paul Signac with “Marseille, Le Port” (1934) and Fernand Léger with “Les Hommes dans la Ville” (1919), both estimated at up to £6 million, and Edgar Degas with “Scène de Ballet” (circa 1885), whose estimate reaches £3.5 million.

Helena Newman, Sotheby’s president for Europe and impressionist and modern art, called the collection “an extraordinarily concentrated capsule of the history of modernism, ranging from Impressionism to Pointillism to Cubism”. Newman also highlighted the exceptional rarity of Monet’s view of the Italian Riviera, once part of John Singer Sargent’s collection, whose sale coincides with the centenary of the artist’s death, an occasion that has sparked the attention of museums and institutions around the world.

Signac’s work arrives at auction at a time of renewed institutional interest in neo-impressionism, after the recent exhibition at the National Gallery in London and in view of the next exhibition at the Courtauld Institute of Art dedicated to Georges Seurat.

The London evening sale on March 4 will also include works by Donald Judd, Edvard Munch, Lucio Fontana and René Magritte.