Sotheby's auctioning Monet painting for £30m

Sotheby’s is hoping to raise up to £30 million for a single painting depicting a view of Venice, which will be put up for auction next month, The Independent reports.

“Le Grand Canal” by Claude Monet dated 1908 is expected to make between £20 million and £30 million when it is sold, as the market for the French impressionist’s works have reached an “all-time point of strength,” according to the auction house.

The painting had been on loan to the National Gallery from 2006 until last year.

Sotheby’s has been looking to international buyers for interest in its February evening sales, which is when the Monet work will be auctioned, and has been displaying a number of paintings in Hong Kong ahead of the auctions, while London’s high-end art scene has been steadily attracting multi-millionaire art enthusiasts from Asia, Russia and Latin America.

The display includes paintings by Matisse, Toulouse-Lautrec and Magritte, and Monet’s ‘L’Embarcardere’, which is estimated to sell between £7.5 million and £10 million. Sotheby’s believe the sales could bring in as much as £202 million overall.