Worth millions, Nelson-Atkins ‘luminous’ masterpiece must be auctioned off next week

Five years after moving to the village of Giverny outside Paris, Claude Monet, credited as a founder of the French Impressionist movement, put oil to canvas in 1888 and created the luminescent “Moulin de Limetz” (“The Mill at Limetz”) that for years has been in proud possession of Kansas City’s Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.

On May 16, the painting is scheduled to go up for auction at Christe’s in New York, which has set the likely price from $18 million to $25 million.

The Nelson did not want to part with the work, which has already been shipped to New York.

The piece, however, is jointly owned. Two-thirds ownership belongs to the Nelson. One-third ownership was retained by the descendants of Ethel B. Atha, who donated the piece as a partial gift to the museum in 1986.

In September, Atha’s daughter, Ethelyn Atha Chase, died at age 99 in New York City. Her lifelong one-third share in the painting was passed on to her descendants, who voiced their desire to sell. The Nelson was not able to purchase the painting itself. The museum entered into an agreement with the family to sell the Monet at auction.

The Nelson’s proceeds will be used to acquire other artworks through a newly formed Joseph S. and Ethel B. Atha Art Acquisition Endowment.

“While we will miss this beautiful work, we are grateful for the Atha family’s generosity which made it possible for us to share this Monet with our community for many years,” Julián Zugazagoitia, director and chief executive officer of the Nelson, told The Star in an email. “The silver lining is that this sale will make it possible for us to establish an endowment in the Atha name that will allow us to acquire art to honor the family in perpetuity and continue adding to and refining our exceptional collection.”

“Moulin de Limtez,” an oil on canvas measuring roughly 3-by-2 1/2-feet, had been on regular display at the Nelson in the main Impressionist gallery since 2008. The family had donated the work earlier but kept it in the family’s New York home until it came to Kansas City.

The Nelson is home to four other Monet pieces from varying periods in the artist’s career. They include “Boulevard des Capucines” from 1873 and 1874, two snowscapes from 1875 and “Water Lilies,” circa 1915-1926. The Nelson is also exhibiting “Church at Vétheuil,” from 1881, on loan from a Kansas City collector.

Zugazagoitia and other representatives from the Nelson leave Tuesday to travel to New York for the auction.

“It’s bittersweet, if I’m being honest,” said Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, the museum’s Louis L. and Adelaide C. Ward senior curator, European arts. She, too, will be attending the auction.

“As a curator,” she said, “we think of ourselves as keepers of collections. It is one of our flock that is getting away. But it was never ours to begin with, completely, so we knew that there was a high probability that we may reach where we are now. And it did. And it has. …

“The silver lining is that the family’s generosity, when they gave us two-thirds share in this painting, will live on in future acquisitions in their name.”

DeGalan said the painting is one of two that Monet did depicting the mill, the Nelson’s dappled in pinks, while the companion piece is highlighted blues and greens.

“That canvas was really very abstract,” she said, coming at a time when Monet was moving away from depicting cityscapes to depicting nature. “It’s just an incredibly luminous painting that reflects the light in the foreground. Even though it is titled ‘The Mill of Limetz,’ the focus really wasn’t the mill, itself. It was really just an opportunity for Monet to get in there and have that dazzling infusion of light on the water’s surface. That became his playground for this painting. And you just see it in full force.”

The Christie’s website features five other Monet canvases, with auction estimates from $2 million to $18 million. In 2018, Monet’s “Nymphéas en Fleur,” from the collection of Peggy and David Rockefeller, sold for $84.7 million.

Ethelyn Atha Case, who died on Sept. 3, had, according to her obituary in the New York Times, been the former president of the Academy of American Poets and founder of the American Poets’ Corner at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. She served on the board of the New York Society Library, the American Composers Orchestra and the New York Botanical Garden.

The Nelson notes that the Atha legacy in Kansas City began when, in 1908 Frank Perry Atha, a salesman for J.A. Folger & Co., expanded the coffee company into Kansas City and the Midwest. It was Atha, according the Folgers’ history website, that convinced grocers in Eastern states to stock the coffee. Atha, who died in 1935, would become vice president and general manager of Folgers. He and his wife, Edith Louise Shaw Atha, became patrons of the arts, collected French Impressionist paintings, American modernism and British and American silver.

Several generations of Athas would continue to work at and help lead the Folgers company.