How Much Is La Grenouillère Worth?

Conclusion: We estimate Claude Monet’s La Grenouillère (1869, The Metropolitan Museum of Art) at $120–180 million fair‑market value today, with a practical insurance/replacement value around $200 million. The work is a museum‑held, canonical early Impressionist masterpiece bequeathed to the Met in 1929, with no modern public sale history—status that confers both cultural primacy and severe market scarcity [1].

Method and anchors: The range extrapolates from Monet’s standing at the very top of the market. The artist’s auction record is $110.7 million for Meules (Haystacks) achieved in 2019 at Sotheby’s, establishing a durable benchmark for blue‑chip Monet trophies [2]. Since 2023, multiple core‑series Monets have transacted in the $65–75 million band, including a Water Lilies painting at $74.01 million (Christie’s, Nov 2023) and another at $65.5 million (Sotheby’s, Nov 2024), confirming sustained depth of bidding for A‑caliber subjects [3][4].

Why La Grenouillère commands a premium: Painted in 1869, La Grenouillère is a touchstone of early Impressionism—an en plein air scene on the Seine that crystallizes Monet’s modern leisure theme and nascent broken‑brushwork. Within Monet’s oeuvre, the subject is exceptionally important and extensively reproduced in scholarship. Prime examples are concentrated in top museums, and the Met’s version is among the most cited. This combination of art‑historical significance, iconicity, and near‑zero private supply justifies an extrapolation above most late‑series comparables and plausibly above Monet’s last decade of public prices, while still bracketing the 2019 Haystacks record as the key ceiling reference [1][2][3][4].

Range calibration: The $120 million lower bound reflects a conservative premium over recent $65–75 million core‑series results for works of later date but broad decorative appeal, plus an early‑masterpiece scarcity premium. The $180 million upper bound recognizes that if a museum‑grade, textbook Monet of this stature were made available with optimal presentation and competition, it could surpass the artist’s prior record in today’s market, even as trophy liquidity remains more selective than in 2019. Category data show fewer ultra‑high‑end trades in 2024, but blue‑chip, canon‑defining lots continue to lead major evening sales when supply appears [5].

Insurance/replacement: At $200 million, the insurance indication captures the extreme difficulty of sourcing a like‑for‑like early Impressionist masterpiece and the additional costs/uncertainties a buyer would face to “replace” such a work (if at all). Key sensitivities around the realized price include technical condition, sale venue and timing, guarantee structure, and global bidding depth; however, none materially weaken the central thesis of masterpiece‑level demand for this subject.