Claude Monet (1840-1926), La Gare Saint-Lazare, vue extérieure

Claude Monet (1840-1926)
La Gare Saint-Lazare, vue extérieure
signed and dated ‘Claude Monet 77’ (lower right)
oil on canvas
23 ¾ x 31 5/8 in. (60.4 x 80.2 cm.)
Painted in Paris in 1877

Special Notice
These lots have been imported from outside the EU for sale using a Temporary Import regime. Import VAT is payable (at 5%) on the Hammer price. VAT is also payable (at 20%) on the buyer’s Premium on a VAT inclusive basis. When a buyer of such a lot has registered an EU address but wishes to export the lot or complete the import into another EU country, he must advise Christie's immediately after the auction.

Saleroom Notice
Please note this work has been requested for the forthcoming Building a New World: Impressionism in the Age of Industry exhibition taking place at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Canada, in February 2019.

Pre-Lot Text
PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION OF NANCY LEE AND PERRY R. BASS
Over the course of nearly forty years, Perry R. Bass and Nancy Lee Bass quietly amassed one of America's great collection so Impressionist, Modern and Post-War art. United by colour, form and connoisseurship, the works in the Collection of Nancy Lee and Perry R. Bass reflect the beauty and joy that defined these two remarkable individuals and their shared, lasting legacy in the arts, philanthropy and civic leadership.
Perry Bass was born in 1914 in Wichita Falls, Texas. When his father died in 1944, maternal uncle Sid W. Richardson became Perry's mentor and, before long, his partner. A noted philanthropist collector in his own right, Richardson rose from humble beginnings to make his mark as one of Americas's savviest businessmen, amassing wealth through the discovery of oil fields in West Texas. Perry Bass joined Richardson in the oil industry in 1935; he would earn his BA from Yale in geology and geophysics two years later. Nephew and uncle remained partners until Richardson's death in 1959, whereupon the fabled entrepreneur left most of his estate to charity. In 1960, Mr. Bass established Bass Brothers Enterprises, which went from strength to strength under his leadership and that of his four sons, Sid, Lee, Edward and Robert.
Perry and his beloved wife, Nancy Lee Muse Bass, met in Fort Worth in 1938, and married in 1941. A Fort Worth native and graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, Mrs. Bass's passion for the arts--classical music, in particular--was fostered at an early age. Over the course of their sixty-five years together, Nancy Lee and Perry Bass led the transformation of Fort Worth into one of the nation's most vibrant communities. "Nancy Lee was the first lady of Fort Worth," remembered Kay Kimbell Carter Fortson, chairman of the Kimbell Art Foundation. "She was the matriarch and the mother not only to her family, but to all of Forth Worth." Former Texas Governor Rick Perry declared that "Texas is a much better place because [Perry Bass] was Texan."
"Fort Worth," The New York Times wrote in 2002, "has acquired the cultural ambitions of Florence under the Medicis." For decades, Nancy Lee and Perry Bass stood at the heart of these efforts providing financial support and unflagging energy to institutions including the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth; the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History; the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra; and the Kimbell Art Museum, which mounted an exhibition of the Bass collection in 2015.
Aided and advised by Eugene V. Thaw, Klaus Perls and William Acquavella, the Basses were drawn to Impressionism, Fauvism, Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism--above all to strong and expressive colourists. "A collection born with entusiasm," recalled Sid Bass, "became a lifetime of pleasure and joy." In addition to her longstanding connection to the Kimbell Art Museum and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Mrs. Bass who was also involved with the Collector's Committee of the National Gallery of Art. In Washington the Basses endowed an eponymous fund that has enabled works by Post-War and Contemporary artists from Barnett Newman, Robert Motherwell and Morris Louis to Agnes Martin, Dan Flavin and Brice Marden, to enter the National Gallery's permanent collection. For Nancy Lee and Perry R. Bass, sharing art in the public sphere was an extension of their lifelong dedication to improving communities.