It is a painting of the surroundings of Giverny which has traveled widely. “Le Moulin de Limetz”, a painting by Claude Monet representing this mill on the banks of the Seine in the distance, painted in 1888, is in Paris this week, from April 5 to 9. It will be exhibited in the Christie’s salons at 9, avenue Matignon (Paris VIII), before its sale in May in New York.
Estimated between 18 and 25 million dollars (between 16.6 and 23.1 million euros), the work belongs to the Nelson-Atkins art museum in Kansas City, Missouri in the United States, and to the heirs of Ethel B. Atha, who put it on the market in order to create an acquisition fund for the establishment. A common practice in the United States.
Another view sold for $21.5 million at Sotheby’s last year
Paul Durand-Ruel, Claude Monet’s official dealer, acquired this painting from the painter then sold it to the collector Lucien Sauphar, before the painting was purchased by the Kansas City collector couple, Joseph S. and Ethel B. Atha, who bequeathed it in part – another American practice – to the Nelson Atkins Museum in 1986.
Coincidentally, Monet painted two views of this mill, at the time when he was starting his series. The other version, also from 1888, was sold in November 2023, by the competing auction house Sotheby’s. It was sold for 21.5 million dollars, or 25.6 million with costs (approximately 23.7 million euros).
Will Christie’s mill beat Sotheby’s? The 150th anniversary of the birth of Impressionism is the occasion for this type of event. During the first Impressionist exhibition in April 1874 in Paris, only four works out of nearly 200 found a buyer, for a pittance. The opportunity also to return to Giverny where Monet’s house has just reopened for the season, and to push on to Limetz-Villez, at the confluence of the Seine and the Epte, where the master painted these two mills and , later, its series of poplars bordering this small tributary.