Monet masterpiece sells for record £40m

High drama at Christie's in London sent the largest Monet Waterlilies ever sold to an astonishing £40.1 million - a record price for the artist and, in the art market's main currency of dollars, a record for any Impressionist picture.

Art's miracle in 2008 of climbing ever higher into the sky while the real economy crumbles on the ground saw no fewer than 11 bidders join in the Monet scramble last night.

"Twelve million pounds to start it!" cried Christopher Burge, the auctioneer and chairman of Christie's America who had been specially flown in from New York to sell this 1919 Waterlilies and 15 other pictures and sculptures owned by diesel billionaire J. Irwin Miller of Columbus, Indiana.

Mr Burge was greeted by an unprecedented long round of applause when he clambered onto the rostrum - the cheers of 1,000 art owners at his mastery of his task. He did not disappoint.

At racing speed he galloped the bids so fast that arms were waving at him. Some of the desperate super-rich waited for calm before entering late. "£26 million new bidder!" cried Mr Burge when we were already far above the Monet record. "£27 million, new

bidder!" But at £30 million we were down to the run-in with three buyers in it, two giving bids by phone to Christie's experts and a seated lady in the front row with mobile phone to ear.

Smiling broadly and confidently throughout, she came through to win - Tania Pos, director of Arts and Management International, one of the world's leading art advisers. An Impressionist specialist, London-based but with a group of mainly financial clients in Canada, the United States, the UK and the Channel Islands, she appeared fresh and ready for several bids more after her two opponents slowed and finally conceded.

As she sipped champagne later at a St James's restaurant she was coy about her client but revealed, surprisingly, that the Monet might stay in Britain.

"It's not clear at all where it's going," she said. "I don't think my client has made up his mind." With several options open, this painting which will cost a fortune to insure in a private home might, on a lucky outcome, stay in London and end up on loan to Tate Britain or the National Gallery.

The price trounced its estimate of between £18 million and £24 million, the highest figure ever placed on a Monet.

But Christie's whole £144 million auction - the highest ever in Europe - made nonsense of estimates.

Ten of the opening 16 lots soared over expectation, notably works by Matisse, Bonnard, Signac and Toulouse-Lautrec owned by the late Simon Sainsbury at his beautiful Georgian Sussex home at Woolbeding and a Degas ballet picture of the first rank, Danseuses à la Barre, which set an artist record at £13.5 million.

Bond Street and Cork Street dealers were bemused by the prices, unable to get in as the super-rich battled to get their money out of Wall Street and the FTSE and park it in Monet. Americans bought 36 per cent of the sale, even at $2 to the £1.

This late 1919 Waterlilies was painted in his garden at Giverny 60 miles northwest of Paris when Monet in great age was half-blind and unable to see redyellows because of a cataract in his left eye. The masterpiece was sold by the famed Norton Simon for a mere £133,300 at Sotheby's New York on 5 May 1971. Its value has risen exactly 300 times since.