Monet’s ‘Iris’ Sets French Auction Record with €50 Million Sale in Paris

On 22 October 2026, Sotheby’s Paris held an auction featuring Claude Monet’s monumental painting ‘Iris’. The painting sold for €50 million including fees, as reported by The Art Newspaper. This sale marked the highest price achieved for a work by Monet in France. The winning bid was placed by a client on the phone, represented by Jen Hua, the deputy chairman of Sotheby’s Asia.

‘Iris’ is the largest painting from Monet’s celebrated Iris series. The artwork was previously part of the collection of Jeanne Schlumberger, who was an heir to the Schlumberger oil company. The auction included 27 works from her collection, and among these were three additional paintings by Monet.

According to The Art Newspaper, three-quarters of the lots from the Schlumberger collection sold for prices above their high estimates. The total proceeds from the sale reached €74.4 million with fees, which was well above the pre-sale estimate of €40 million. Pre-sale estimates were calculated without fees.

Among the Monet works sold from the Schlumberger collection was ‘Saule Pleureur’ (Weeping Willow), which had been valued between €9 million and €12 million. The auction also included other notable works, but the focus remained on Monet’s ‘Iris’ as the headline lot.

Shortly before the auction began, three paintings by Paul Cézanne were withdrawn from the sale. These works had been classified as national treasures. According to Sotheby’s, the Cézanne paintings were withdrawn with the intention of returning them to the artist’s hometown, Aix-en-Provence.

On the same day, Christie’s held a separate auction in Paris, offering 26 works. This sale included two Monet paintings: ‘Bord des falaises à Pourville’, which sold for €12.7 million, and ‘Trois pots de tulipes’, which fetched €3.1 million. The Christie’s auction also featured works by other artists.

At Christie’s, Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s ‘Jeunes filles au bord de la mer’ sold for €5.8 million, and Pablo Picasso’s ‘Nature morte au gruyere’ realised €3 million. The total amount achieved at Christie’s was €41.6 million, including buyer fees. These results highlight the strong performance of Impressionist and modern art at Paris auctions in October 2026.