An early work of French impressionist painter Claude Monet set a new auction record Tuesday when it was acquired for $41 million at a Christie’s sale in New York.

“Le Pont du chemin de fer a Argenteuil,” an 1873 painting of a bridge with two trains passing over the Seine while pleasure boats float below, was sold for $41,481,000, said Rik Pike, a spokesman for the auction house, reports the Associated Press.

The sale price, which included the buyer’s premium, exceeded the pre-auction estimate of $35 million to $40 million, Pike added.

“It is the quintessential early Monet. We will not see another one this good for a long while, I don't suppose, unless this one lures a few out,” Christie's honorary chairman and the evening's auctioneer, Christopher Burge, said.

The previous auction record for Claude Monet was $36.5 million for his 1904 “Nympheas,” one of a series of water lily paintings, which was sold last year.

Christie’s said the buyer wished to remain anonymous. The seller was not identified by the auction house either but it is reported to be the Nahmads, a family of art dealers with galleries in New York and London.

Argenteuil is described by the AP as a center for pleasure boating that affluent Parisians regaled in and a popular subject for many Impressionist artists. Monet himself rented a house near the cast-iron railway bridge.

The impressionist and modern art auction totaled $277.3 million Tuesday night, Bloomberg.com adds. The auction had been anticipated to bring in $287 million to $405 million. Fourteen of the 58 lots failed to find buyers.

Other records set last night, per Bloomberg, were Alberto Giacometti’s 960 “Grand Femme Debout II,” a 9- foot-tall bronze of a woman, which sold for $27.5 million, above the anticipated $18 million, and Auguste Rodin’s 1897 bronze sculpture “Eve,” which fetched $19 million, considerably more than the $9 million to $12 million estimate.