Monet painting set to fetch £40m

One of Monet's celebrated water-lily paintings is due to be auctioned in London for a price expected to reach up to £40 million, it has been announced.

The painting - dating back a century and from his most famous series of works - will be part of the most valuable art auction yet to take place in the city later this month.

The impressionist and modern art at Christie's sale also features a "blue period" Picasso, tipped to go for up to £40 million, after being withdrawn from sale four years ago. Together with works by Magritte, Klimt and Van Gogh, the June 23 sale is expected to raise between £160 million and £230 million.

The art market has seen prices soar in recent months. An equivalent sale at Christie's in New York last month saw the highest price ever paid at auction for an artwork, when a Picasso masterpiece went for £70 million.

Monet's 1906 painting Nympheas was one of many he painted in his water garden at Giverny, with the pond and lilies depicted in often huge scale. It is the largest of nine surviving works from that year. He would often destroy those with which he was not satisfied.

And it is one of only five which formed part of his famed display of monumental water lilies at the Musee de l'Orangerie in Paris in 1909. A rare study for that exhibition sold for £41 million in London in 2008, a new world record for a Monet.

Nympheas was in the family of one collector for several decades and was bought by the present owner at auction at Christie's New York in May 2000. It is expected to sell for between £30 million and £40 million.

Giovanna Bertazzoni, director and head of impressionist and modern art at Christie's, London, said: "Claude Monet's water-lily paintings are amongst the most recognised and celebrated works of the 20th century, and were hugely influential to many of the following generations of artists.

"It is extremely exciting that with this work, the blue period Picasso, Klimt's portrait of Ria Munk and Van Gogh's 1889 masterpiece, we will be presenting at auction celebrated works from the most formative years of four of the most important and influential artists of the last century."

The Picasso which is to be sold - Portrait of Angel Fernandez de Soto - is from the collection of Lord Lloyd-Webber and was dropped from a New York sale at the last moment due to an ownership claim. Sale of the 1903 Picasso will benefit the Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation, a charity which promotes arts, culture and heritage.