Record price expected for Monet

A Claude Monet painting is expected to fetch a record £24m when it goes under the hammer in London later.

The painting, Le Bassin Aux Nympheas, is one of four pieces from the impressionist's water lily series.

Painted in 1919 in Giverny in France it has been seen in public just once in the past 80 years.

It is among a large collection of impressionist and modern European art which is up for sale at the auction house Christie's.

"There's never been such a picture sold at auction in Europe in the last 20 years," Oliver Camu of Christie's said.

"It will be the most important expressionist picture sold in Europe this year," he added.

Monet painted several smaller water lily pieces, sometimes referred to as his "water landscapes", before he decided to embark upon a series of large-scale Nympheas in 1914.

These paintings would eventually lead to his Grandes Decorations, the celebrated frieze now in the Musee de l'Orangerie in Paris.

Le Bassin Aux Nympheas is one of a tiny handful of paintings the artist relinquished during his lifetime as he viewed his water lilies as a large work in progress.

Of its three fellow paintings one is in the collection of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, another was cut into two and the third is in a private collection.

The current record for a Monet painting is £20.9m for his 1873 Le Pont du chemin de fer a Argenteuil, which sold in May.

Renaissance

Nymphéas sold at auction for £18.5m at Sotheby's in London in 2007

Other highlights in this evenings sale include works from Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Edgar Degas.

According to findings from the Hiscox-Art Market Research, 19th-Century European art has seen a 13% rise in value since March 2007.

Art expert Charles Dupplin said: "It does seem that the art market is remaining reasonably robust, with some specific segments - such as 19th-Century European art - even undergoing a form of renaissance."

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