Rare Monet painting to be auctioned

Painted in 1864 by impressionist painter Claude Monet (1840-1926), Le Chantier de petits navires, près de Honfleur, is one of Monet's earliest surviving oil paintings.

The scene includes a workshop of small sailboats with logs on the beach and small boats sailing in the harbor of Honfleur, France.

Monet often painted the adventurous coast of Normandy with its changing dark atmosphere, wet silty soils and dramatic tides.

The marine landscape shows the inspiration from Monet's mentors, Eugène Boudin, a French landscape and marine painter, and Johan Jongkind, a Dutch marine painter.

The painting to be auctioned by Christies in June, is one of a pair of paintings that he painted in different seasons, which prefigures the series of paintings of haystacks and poplars that made him famous.

In the beach scene, Monet paints bold logs in the foreground, leading into the painting. Monet's brushstrokes are clearly visible in the sand, logs and smoke coming out of the sailboat workshop's chimney.

The painting is expected to fetch between two and three million dollars.