Live Auction: 22 October 2026 • 6:00 PM CEST • Paris

T his October, Sotheby’s Paris will present Le Temps Retrouvé: The Schlumberger Collection, one of the most significant private collections of Impressionist and Modern art ever to come to auction in France. Hidden from public view for decades, the collection brings together masterpieces by Claude Monet, Gustave Moreau, Paul Cézanne, Gustave Courbet, Camille Claudel and others. Estimated in excess of €40 million / $64 million, it was assembled over four decades by Jeanne Schlumberger (1889–1983), whose pioneering eye and remarkable foresight shaped an extraordinary collection.

Leading the sale is Claude Monet’s monumental Iris (1924–25), a masterpiece from the artist’s final years at Giverny, estimated at €22–30 million. The most important work from this celebrated series ever to appear at auction, Iris exemplifies the ambition and innovation of Monet’s late practice. Its history is equally remarkable, having been acquired by pioneering gallerist Katia Granoff (1895–1989) with the prescient backing of Jeanne Schlumberger. Together, they recognised that Monet’s late works were not the final chapters of Impressionism, but the opening pages of Modernism and Abstraction.

It is joined by a second work by Monet, Saule pleureur (est. €9–12 million), among the most celebrated paintings from his series of weeping willows at Giverny. Both works descended directly from Monet to his son Michel before entering the collection of Katia Granoff and ultimately that of Jeanne Schlumberger.

Yet Le Temps Retrouvé extends far beyond Monet, tracing a broader history of artistic innovation through works by Paul Cézanne, Pierre Bonnard, Gustave Moreau, Gustave Courbet, Camille Claudel, Eugène Delacroix and Chaïm Soutine. From Cézanne’s rare fresco from the Jas de Bouffan, his family home and creative laboratory, to Bonnard’s luminous evocations of memory and nature and Moreau’s sumptuous Symbolism, the collection charts a lineage of artists who transformed the course of modern painting.  

Long before these artists achieved their place in the canon, Jeanne Schlumberger recognised their significance. At a time when their work remained misunderstood by many collectors and critics, she identified a radical new language of painting—one that would reshape the legacy of Impressionism and influence generations of twentieth-century artists.