By DPA,
New York : A Claude Monet painting fetched $41.48 million at a New York auction, breaking the record for a work by the French Impressionist painter.
An anonymous buyer picked up “The Railroad Bridge” at Argenteuil Tuesday night at a sale at Christie’s auction house, The New York Times reported.
The 1873 landscape depicting a Seine riverbank and two trains sitting on a railway bridge as sailboats pass underneath was sold by the Nahmad family of art dealers, which has galleries in New York and London.
The family bought the painting in 1988 for $12.6 million at a Christie’s auction in London.
Before Tuesday, the record price for a Monet painting had been $36.5 million, set last year, for “Nympheas”, a painting from his water lilies series.
Christie’s had predicted the painting would sell for $35 million. The hammer price was $37, but commissions took the total cost to $41.48 million.