In what is becoming a new ritual where Chinese buyers are confirmed after the sale of a major work of art in New York or Hong Kong, Sotheby’s announced this morning that Wang Jianlin’s Dalian Wanda Group was the buyer of the $20m Monet that everyone assumed would go to a Chinese buyer:

Unseen in the auction market for over two decades, Bassin aux nymphéas, les rosiers represents the artist at the height of his mature style, and ranks as one of the most important examples among the boldly modern works of Monet’s career, when Monet elevated the tenets of Impressionism to new heights.

Mr GUO Qingxiang, who is in charge of the art collection of Wanda Group, said, “Dalian Wanda Group has been actively collecting Impressionist and Modern Art in recent years. Since the purchase of Picasso’s Claude et Paloma in 2013, we have been devoted to collecting original and important works representative of key developments in art history. We are thrilled to have acquired at Sotheby’s New York Monet’s Bassin aux nymphéas, les rosiers, which was unseen in the market for more than two decades. Wanda Group will continue to enrich its collection with works by the most significant artists in the world and remain devoted to raising the awareness and knowledge of Mainland Chinese collectors in Western art.”