Claude Monet’s Water Lilies (AP photo)

NEW YORK (AP) – A work from Claude Monet’s “Water Lilies” series has been sold for more than $43 million at a New York City auction.

The money will benefit the Hackley School in suburban Tarrytown, N.Y.

The work dates from 1905. That’s the year Monet began a feverish phase of paintings depicting his garden’s lily pond in Giverny, France. The work that was sold is considered among the best.

The painting is from the estate of Ethel Strong Allen, widow of Wall Street executive Herbert Allen Sr.

She bequeathed the Monet to the school, along with two Impressionist landscapes by Camille Pissarro and Alfred Sisley.

Christie’s auction house says the three works on Wednesday raised a combined total of nearly $51 million for the K-12 boarding school.

The Monet’s sale price was $43,762,500.