The sale suggests that US$318 billion of credit losses and writedowns reported by banks linked to U.S. subprime loans haven't derailed the international art market. The 1873 painting was sold early in the evening's impressionist and modern art auction, the first of two weeks of bellwether sales projected to total US$1.8 billion. Four of the evening's first 21 lots didn't sell.
Christie's estimated that "Le Point du Chemin de Fer a Argenteuil" would fetch as much as US$40 million. It was sold to a telephone bidder.
New York art adviser Cristin Tierney said that while buyers of impressionist and modern art aren't as plentiful as contemporary art devotees, they remain loyal and rich.
"There are a lot of people who have enough money," she said before the sale. "They are recession-proof."
The seller of the Monet was the Monaco-based Nahmad art- dealing family, which bought it for US$12.4 million at Christie's in 1988. The Nahmads buy and hold for the long term, storing billions in artworks in a Geneva warehouse.
Monet's previous auction record was set in June 2007 at Sotheby's in London. An unidentified bidder paid US$36.4 million for "Nympheas," from the artist's famous water lily series, based on the garden at his home in Giverny, France.
Tuesday night's star canvas features two men standing by the shore of the Seine, watching a pair of sailboats. Overhead a pair of brown trains and a cloud of billowing white smoke cross a hulking iron bridge.
Monet lived in Argenteuil from 1871 to 1878, producing hundreds of landscapes.
Prices include a buyer's commission of 25 percent of the hammer price up to US$20,000, 20 percent of the price from US$20,000 to US$500,000 and 12 percent above US$500,000. Estimates do not reflect commissions.
