A Claude Monet painting of water lilies sold tonight for a record £40.1 million (€25 million) with fees at Christie's International in London.
The artist's six-foot, seven-inch-wide canvas, Le Bassin aux Nympheas, dating from 1919, had been expected to sell for between £18 million and £24 million, said Christie's.
The Monet work was bought by an anonymous collector, setting a new world record price for the artist at auction in the process.
The Monet picture was the second-most expensive painting sold at a European auction, after the Rubens work The Massacre of the Innocents'in July 2002, bought for £49.5 million.
The Monet was part of a group of 17 works entered from the estate of the late J. Irwin and Xenia S. Miller, collectors from Columbus, Indiana. Their paintings had not been seen on the market for several decades.
Bloomberg