Christie's Paris will place Claude Monet's Bord des falaises à Pourville (circa 1882) at the center of its October auction, with an estimate of €11 million to €15 million. The luminous coastal scene is the headline lot in a sale drawn from the family collection of Paul Durand-Ruel, the influential dealer who helped turn Impressionism into a global market force.
Scheduled for October 22 during Art Basel Paris week, the sale, titled Durand-Ruel, Generations of Vision, brings together 62 works preserved across generations. Alongside Monet, the selection includes paintings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, Gustave Loiseau, Henry Moret, and Pablo Picasso, reflecting a collection shaped by both taste and art-historical significance.
Created around 1882 during Monet's time in the Normandy seaside village of Pourville, the painting belongs to one of his most celebrated coastal series. Comparable works from the same period are held by major museums, underscoring the importance of this composition within the artist's landscape legacy. The work first belonged to collector Léon Clapusson before entering the Durand-Ruel family's holdings.
Before the auction, the collection will be on view at Christie's Paris from October 16 to 21. The sale also highlights the lasting cultural reach of the Durand-Ruel name, as the family's next generation continues to engage with the art world through a new gallery project in New York.
This moment connects heritage, scholarship, and the evolving art market, showing how historic collections can continue to shape the cultural conversation of the future.
