17.04.2019
The new owner of the painting, which has been owned by British collectors for almost 70 years, managed to get an export license for the work and remove it from the UK, despite the opposition of one of the members of the export commission
Claude Monet. Charing Cross Bridge. 1901-1904. Photo: Private collection
Claude Monet’s canvas, depicting London’s Charing Cross Bridge, was sold in a private transaction for $ 63 million. The new owner received an export license for the painting and brought it abroad.
Monet began to paint the landscape in London in 1901, continued to make changes to Giverny and finished the work three years later. In 1932, at Christie’s auction, the work was acquired for £ 210 by the 9th Duke of Marlborough, who lived in Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire. Although Monet wrote almost 100 species of London, only a few of them are in the collections of British collectors. The Duke of Marlborough sold the Charing Cross Bridge in 1934, just eight days before his death, and in 1950 Alexander Margulis, the owner of a London-based watch and jewelry company, bought the piece. After the death of Margulis in 1992, Charing Cross Bridge remained in the ownership of the descendants of a businessman and was presented at the Impressionists exhibition at the Tate Gallery in London last year.
An anonymous foreign buyer has applied for an export license to export the product outside the country. Because of the importance of the painting, one of the members of the export commission recommended to postpone the issuance of the license in order to allow UK buyers to buy it at the appropriate price. However, the commission rejected the recommendation and issued an export permit. The fact that the price of the work is indicated in dollars, suggests that the landscape did not go to Europe, but to a buyer from America or Asia.