Monet, Kandinsky paintings sell for millions at Christie’s auction

A water-lily painting by Claude Monet sold for $43.7 million while a key painting by Wassily Kandinsky brought in $23 million at a Christie’s auction in New York on Wednesday. The sales were part of a larger auction of Impressionist and modern works.

Monet’s “Nympheas,” which dates from 1905, brought in approximately $43.7 million, according to Christie’s. The painting is one of many that the artist created depicting water lilies floating on a pond.

The painting was being sold by the Hackley School in upstate New York, which received the work from Ethel Strong Allen, the wife of the late financier Herb Allen. The Hackley School is an elite private prep school in Tarrytown, N.Y.

Kandinsky’s “Studie für Improvisation 8” sold for $23 million, according to the auction house. The amount is believed to be an auction record for the artist. Completed in 1909, the work was being sold by the Volkart Foundation, a charitable division of the Swiss trading firm Volkart Brothers, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

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