Monet's 'Iris' Fetches €50 Million at Sotheby’s Paris, Setting France Auction Record

Claude Monet’s Iris sold for 50 million euros, including fees, at Sotheby’s Paris on Oct. 22, setting the highest nominal price ever achieved for an artwork sold at public auction in France.

The painting, generally dated to about 1924-25, far exceeded its presale estimate of 22 million to 30 million euros — itself the highest estimate ever given to a painting offered at auction in France. The result underscored how strongly collectors are now competing for Monet’s late works: Iris is a large canvas from the final years of the artist’s life, and it had been out of public view for decades before appearing in the single-owner sale “Le Temps Retrouvé: The Schlumberger Collection.”

Sotheby’s said the buyer was a private collector in Asia. Reports described a bidding battle lasting roughly 42 to 45 minutes and involving at least six bidders, an unusually long contest for a single lot. Helly Nahmad, the art dealer, told Smithsonian Magazine, citing The New York Times: “I’ve never seen bidding that long.”

The nearly five-by-six-foot painting, measuring about 1.59 meters by 1.80 meters, came from the Schlumberger family collection. Sotheby’s catalog traced the work’s ownership from the artist’s estate to Michel Monet, the painter’s son, then to Galerie Katia Granoff, and finally to the Schlumberger collection. The family acquired it in the 1950s and kept it in its Paris townhouse, where it remained largely unseen publicly for decades — a key part of its appeal when it finally came to market.

Its condition also mattered. Sotheby’s specialists said the late Monets in the collection were unvarnished, unlined and in exceptional condition, qualities that can be especially important for collectors buying major 20th-century paintings. Thomas Bompard, Sotheby’s Paris vice president, told Reuters that Iris and another late Monet in the sale were “unvarnished, unlined and untouched exactly how Monet painted them,” calling that “really, truly miraculous.”

The broader Schlumberger sale brought in about 74.4 million euros, but the Monet dominated attention because it reset the French auction record. The previous mark widely cited in coverage was Henri Matisse’s Les coucous, tapis bleu et rose, which sold at Christie’s Paris in 2009 for 35.905 million euros including premium.

The result does not top Monet’s global auction high. That record remains Meules (“Haystacks”), which sold for $110.7 million in New York in 2019. But the Paris sale arrives at a moment of renewed focus on Monet’s late paintings, which were once criticized for their loose, all-over surfaces and are now often seen as important precursors to modern abstraction. The timing also mattered: 2026 marks the centenary of Monet’s death, and major museum shows in Paris have helped draw fresh attention to the artist’s final years.