One of Claude Monet's famous water lily paintings was sold for US$43.7m at the Christie's auction in New York .
Monet's oil-on-canvas Nympheas painting reached the high end of its US$30m-US$50m pre-sale estimate.
Claude Monet was a founder of French impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature
The term Impressionism was reportedly derived from the title of his painting ‘impression sunrise’.