An art gallery’s claim that they sold an original Monet work on a social media platform has sparked disbelief on Chinese internet.
Gallery Boss’s Backyard Garden posted a Monet listing on Xiaohongshu, a Chinese social media and e-commerce platform often likened to Instagram, on 9 December.
The gallery post carried a picture of the painting, apparently a 1908 work from Claude Monet’s Nymphéas series depicting the famous water lilies in his garden at Giverny, France, along with the message: “Looks like no one on Xiaohongshu has ever sold a Monet Water Lilies before.”
Gao Zhen Yu, owner of the Xiaohongshu account who runs Gao’s Fine Art gallery in Avignon in southern France, claimed in the post to have records of the seven prior owners of the painting as well as details of when it was exhibited, The South China Morning Post reported.
The website of Gao’s Fine Art says they have galleries in Beijing, Taiyuan, Xi’an, and Mauritius as well. They claim to hold more than “5,000 contemporary and modern art masterpieces”, including works by Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, Jean Dubuffet, Keith Haring, and classic works by artists like Peter Paul Rubens, Eugène Delacroix, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Monet.
When the post first went up, it got over 20,000 reactions as most users thought it was a stunt. But another post on 17 December by an account called Ours Gallery said a buyer identified only by their surname Tian had reached out after seeing Gao’s post and purchased the artwork for several hundred million yuan. Gao posted screenshots of a text conversation between the two which purportedly show the buyer confirming the purchase and arranging for it to be shipped to Switzerland.
The Independent has reached out to Gao for more information on the sale.
The post led to a flurry of activity on the platform as most users were baffled by the idea that someone would buy a piece of art of such value on a social media platform.
According to the SCMP, the painting in the post matches the details that appear in the Catalogue Raisonné, an annotated listing of an artist’s works. Monet’s Catalogue Raisonné, which was compiled by the Wildenstein Institute and first published in 1996, states that the last known appearance of this painting was in 1976, at a Christie’s London spring auction.
Earlier this year, an expert in art authentication managed to detect up to 40 counterfeit paintings for sale on eBay, including pieces supposedly by the likes of Monet and Renoir.
