Monet painting sells at auction for world record £70MILLION – the same cost as new NHS hospital
Anonymous buyer spends a fortune on the artwork even though there are 25 more just like it
A CLAUDE Monet painting of a grain stack fetched a record £70m ($81.4m) in New York after a 14-minute bidding war.
'Meule' was offered at Christie’s Impressionist and Modern Art sale and was expected to fetch around $45m.
It was sold without a guarantee by an anonymous American collector, according to the auction house.
At £70m (plus auction fees) it cost the same as NHS England's new Northumbria Specialist Emergency Care Hospital.
The 1891 painting, shimmering with hues of reds, pinks, blues and yellow, depicts a close-up of a single cone-shaped stack after harvest.
The work last appeared at auction in 1999, when it sold for $11.9m and the seller acquired it privately in 2002.
Monet painted about 25 of the grain stack canvases in the early 1890s, of which 19 are in public museum collections, according to Christie’s.
The previous record for a Monet painting was $80.4m in 2008, set with the sale of Le Bassin Aux Nympheas.
It sold for £18m ($23.3m), a new record for the Russian artist. The previous record for his work was $23m set in 2012.
'Rigid and Curved' was first owned by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, which acquired it directly from the artist in 1936, a year after it was completed, according to Christie's.
