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This year is already shaping up to be an incredibly popular one for works by world-renowned late painter Claude Monet. In March, the Impressionist's Seine River masterpiece sold for an impressive $18.5 million at auction. And now, just two months later, one of his picturesque hay bale paintings sold for a staggering $38.4 million, leading the New York City auction it was purchased at.
The painting, titled Meules à Giverny (translated as The Stacks at Giverny) is part of a series of hay bale paintings Monet created during 1890 and 1891. They are considered to be some of the artist's best-known works and heavily feature the livelihoods of local French farmers of the time. This particular piece in the series features a large red-purple hay stack with a row of charming trees positioned behind it, as sunlight dances between the branches and leaves and casts long shadows across the pile.
The popular appeal of the painting paid off, as multiple bidding wars broke out and it took only eight minutes to be sold. In 2019, Sotheby's—the same company that sold this piece—auctioned off another one of Monet's hay bale paintings for $110.7 million, setting a new artist record. Ultimately, the auction resulted in $235 million worth of sales, with works by Leonora Carrington and René Magritte coming in after Monet.
h/t: [ARTnews]
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