MONET’S LETTERS SELL FOR $1.7 MILLION

Claude Monet’s letters sold for $1.7 million yesterday at Artcurial, much more than the $600,000 expected, writes Stephanie Nikolopoulos for Gothamist. There were about a thousand in the collection. Some went to private collectors, while others went to the Musee d’Orsay, which recently also acquired Monet’s Wind Effect, Series of the Poplars_. Michel Cornebois, Monet’s only living direct descendent, gave the letters to the French auction house. The letters, which date from between 1874 and 1926, include those actually written by Monet himself, as well as some that were written to him by friends and colleagues. Among the letters are those Monet wrote to contemporary artists—Mary Cassatt, Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir—and to writer Guy de Maupassant.