Stolen Art DealerMonet’s oil painting of a huge grain stack filling the left of the canvas, its face a patchwork of red, pink, purple and blue strokes, with a smaller stack beyond it, green trees at right and a glowing yellow and pink sunset sky over a green and lilac field. Signed “Claude Monet 91” at lower left.
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Catalogue No. 10 · Sotheby’s · New York
Grainstacks
Sold for
$110.7million
Sotheby’s, New York · 14 May 2019 · 9th of 392 in the Record Book
Confirmed by two sourcesAbout $145.7 million in today’s money: 1,700 years of the typical US household’s income. Source
- Artist
- Claude Monet (French, 1840–1926)
- Title
- Grainstacks (Meules)
- Date
- 1890 (signed and dated 1891)
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Size
- 72.7 × 92.6 cm (28⅝ × 36¾ in)
Look closer
Colour in the strokes
Short, brushy strokes of red, pink, purple and green build the stack. Up close, a pile of grain turns out to be made of colour, not outline.
The foreground stack
The large grain stack at left is the plain shape the whole picture is built around. The brightest colours sit on its edges.
Everyone calls them haystacks. Sotheby’s and the Museum Barberini say they are stacks of unthreshed grain. Monet painted a series of 25 of them near his home at Giverny in 1890 and 1891.
This canvas went to Chicago in 1892, when Potter and Bertha Palmer acquired it. The Palmer family kept it until Christie’s New York sold it on 14 May 1986 for about $2.5 million.
Thirty-three years later, to the day, on 14 May 2019, Sotheby’s New York sold it for $110.7 million including the buyer’s premium, against a pre-sale estimate of more than $55 million. Bidding lasted about eight minutes, with six bidders, Sotheby’s says. That is about 44 times the 1986 price.
Sotheby’s called it the record for any Impressionist work. The press called it the first Impressionist work to pass $100 million at auction. As of October 2026, no higher Monet price has been reported.
Reportedly bought by Hasso Plattner, it now hangs in the Hasso Plattner Collection at the Museum Barberini in Potsdam. In October 2022 climate activists threw mashed potato at it. It was behind glass, and the museum said a check found no damage.
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The sale
- Auction house
- Sotheby’s, New York
- Date
- 14 May 2019
- Lot
- 8
- Estimate
- In excess of $55 million
- Sold for
- $110.7 million (including buyer’s premium)
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Provenance
2 July 1891
Bought from the artist by the dealer Durand-Ruel, Paris.
1892
Passed between Durand-Ruel’s New York gallery and W. C. Van Horne of Montreal, then settled with Potter and Bertha Palmer of Chicago.
1892–1986
Kept by the Palmer family in Chicago; by 1945 it was held by Honoré and Grace Palmer, by inheritance.
14 May 1986
Sold at Christie’s New York (lot 18) for about $2.5 million to a private collection in the United States.
14 May 2019
Sold at Sotheby’s New York (lot 8) for $110,747,000 including premium, consigned by the previous owner.
After 2019
Reportedly bought by the Hasso Plattner Foundation; now shown as part of the Hasso Plattner Collection at the Museum Barberini, Potsdam. Reported
See it on a wall
Sources
- Museum Barberini collection record MB-Mon-26: Grainstacks (Meules), 1890
- Sotheby’s: One of the finest examples of Monet’s Haystack paintings
- Sotheby’s: Monet’s Meules sells for astonishing $110.7 million, a new artist record
- HENI: The Painting That Set Monet’s Auction Record
- Tagesspiegel: Das teuerste Monet-Bild der Welt hängt in Potsdam
Prices include the buyer’s premium, in US dollars at the time of sale, unless marked as a hammer price.
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