A magisterial bid was expected for this pointillist landscape by Charles Angrand, but the actual result went far beyond the wildest hopes... It took €992,200 to become the new owner of this "Coin du parc Monceau" – in other words, eight times the high estimate. The painting was carried off by Hubert Duchemin on behalf of a New York collector. Until then, the top price registered for a work by the artist was the now long-ago £485,500 (worth €956,420 today) paid on 30 June 1998 for "La Seine à Courbevoie - La Grande Jatte" of 1888, at Sotheby's in London. Like the latter, the landscape here belongs to the artist's pointillist and most sought-after period. The work depicts a solitary, almost rural spot of the Parc Monceau, in a symphony of hundreds of subtle green strokes that set off a female figure with a red parasol. After meeting Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, and co-founding the Société des Artistes Indépendants in 1884, Angrand explored this stylistic process with considerable success. Subsequently, he developed a mistier, more fluid style.
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