Christie's expert Giovanna Bertazzoni looks at Claude Monet's 1906 painting Nympheas to be sold June 23 in London. Christie's expert Giovanna Bertazzoni looks at Claude Monet's 1906 painting Nympheas to be sold June 23 in London. (Clive Gee/PA Wire/Associated Press)

A moody Claude Monet painting of water lilies is expected to fetch the equivalent of $45 million to $60 million Cdn when it goes on auction in London, England, later this month.

Nympheas, painted in 1906, will be sold June 23 at Christie's auction house. The painting was shown at the famous 1909 exhibition in Paris, where the artist gained acclaim for his studies of light in his garden in Giverny.

The unidentified seller bought it in New York in May 2000 for $20.9 million US.

Also among the 61 works on auction are a Blue Period portrait by Pablo Picasso, Portrait of Angel Fernandez de Soto, offered by the Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation founded by the composer. It also could bring in more than $45 million.

With the appetite for Impressionist and early 20th-century art booming again, auction house Christie's is anticipating one of the largest auctions in British history with a total take exceeding $250 million.

"We are witnessing a great willingness from clients to consign works of art of the highest quality," Giovanna Bertazzoni, head of impressionist and modern art at Christie's, told Reuters.

In February, Sotheby's set a new record of $223.6 million for its auction of Impressionist art.

Christie's June auction will also include:

  • Parc de l'hopital Saint-Paul, an 1889 Vincent van Gogh landscape that he painted in an asylum, estimated at $12 million to $18 million.
  • Frauenbildnis (Portrait of Ria Munk III) by Gustav Klimt, estimated at $27 million.
With files from The Associated Press