One of Monet's finest large-scale 'Water Lilies' paintings to star at Sotheby's Claude Monet, Le Bassin aux Nymphéas. Sotheby's Gallery Image. Courtesy Sotheby's. NEW YORK, NY .- One of Claude Monets finest large-scale Water Lilies paintings ever to appear at auction will star in Sothebys Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale on 12 May in New York. Estimated in the region of $40 million, Le Bassin aux Nymphéas stands among the most iconic and celebrated Impressionist images. Measuring nearly 40 by 79 inches, this enrapturing canvas from 1917-19 was conceived as part of the artists legendary series of monumental paintings depicting his water lily pond at Giverny, the Grandes Décorations, which he began in 1914 and examples of which can be found today in the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris and The Museum of Modern Art in New York. The series took Monets paintings of the tranquil lily pond in a radical new direction and were twice the size of his earlier Water Lilies.