Wednesday evening's sale set a new auction record for the artist. The previous auction record for a Monet was $80.4 million set in 2008.

The 1891 painting, shimmering with hues of reds, pinks, blues and yellow, depicts a close-up of a single cone-shaped stack after harvest.

Monet's "Grainstack" series — 25 in all — was painted just steps from his home outside a farmer's field in the French village of Giverny.

The work offered Wednesday night was one of a few still in private hands.

(Read also: Marble Rodin sculpture fetches record price at NY auction)

 

After 14 minutes of tense bidding, Lot 9: Claude Monet’s ‘Meule', one of the last of the artist’s momentous ‘Grainstack' series to be in private hands, sells for $81,447,500, achieving a new world auction record for the artist at the Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale at Christie’s New York

A photo posted by CHRISTIE'S (@christiesinc) on Nov 16, 2016 at 4:39pm PST

Among other highlights at Wednesday's auction was a painting by Wassily Kandinsky that had not been on the market in more than 50 years.

It sold for $23.3 million, a new record for the Russian artist. The previous record for his work was $23 million set in 2012.

"Rigid and Curved" was first owned by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, which acquired it directly from the artist in 1936, a year after it was completed, according to Christie's.

A lively, colorful piece of geometric and organic shapes, it's been in the same private collection since 1964.

Christie's said the painting's texture of sand mixed with paint was a technique Kandinsky used only in his Paris paintings of 1934-1935.

 

Lot 18: ‘Rigide et courbe’ (Rigid and Curved) by Wassily Kandinsky (1935) marked the second anniversary of the artist's arrival in Paris following the closure of the Bauhaus in Berlin. This evening it sold for $23,319,500 at Christie's New York, breaking the previous world auction record for the artist

A photo posted by CHRISTIE'S (@christiesinc) on Nov 16, 2016 at 5:12pm PST

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