“The Impressionist market is alive and well,” said Brooke Lampley, head of the Impressionist and Modern Art department at the auction house.

Works from the grainstack series — the first of Monet’s formal series paintings — rarely come to market. The last painting from this group at auction sold for $14.3 million in 2001. The grainstacks, said Abigail Asher, a New York art adviser, “are timeless.”

The painting auctioned on Wednesday, which had been estimated at $45 million, ultimately sold to Margot Rosenberg, a director in Christie’s client advisory department, on behalf of an anonymous buyer on the phone during the Impressionist and Modern sale.

The previous auction record for a Monet was set in June 2008, for “Le Bassin aux nymphéas,” one of the iconic series of water lilies, from 1919, which sold at Christie’s London in June 2008 for 40.9 million pounds. (Adjusted for inflation, in 2016 dollars, that would be roughly $63.6 million today.)

“This one is different,” said David Benrimon, a New York dealer who has bought and sold Monet works. “There is more of the deep red of a sunset in this painting. It’s unique.”

The painting helped bring the total of Christie’s sale to $246.3 million against a low estimate of $200 million, and 39 of the 48 lots were successful. The equivalent sale last year yielded $145.5 million from 59 lots.

Despite a shortage of quality Impressionist and Modern works, Christie’s managed to secure at least a half-dozen pieces with broad international appeal, several of which sold beyond their estimates, including Wassily Kandinsky’s “Rigide et courbé,” which established a high for the artist at $23.3 million over the low estimate of $18 million, bought by the New York art consultancy Ruth Catone.

Phillips, at its sale of 20th-century and contemporary art earlier in the evening, succeeded in selling 92 percent of its 37-lot sale, bringing in a total of $111.2 million, compared to $66.9 million last November.

“Job done,” said Edward Dolman, chairman and chief executive of Phillips. “This was a significant step up in a market that has contracted.”

STAR OF THE EVENING “Meule,” one of 25 paintings of grainstacks made between 1890 and 1891, generated the greatest excitement of the auction season so far, with a protracted bidding war that had the hushed attendees at the edge of their seats until the hammer finally came down to applause.

POP ART TAKES FLIGHT Phillips’s top-performing lot was Gerhard Richter’s 1963 photo-based painting “Düsenjäger,” valued at $25 million to $35 million, featuring an American fighter jet screaming across the sky. This early Pop Art image was last seen at auction in 2007, when it was bought by Paul Allen, for $11.2 million. (Mr. Allen was the seller on Wednesday.) Though highly regarded by art historians, Mr. Richter’s figurative paintings tend to be less sought after by today’s collectors than his more decorative abstracts. Indeed, this more than 6-foot-wide canvas sold on a low estimate bid of $25.6 million to its third-party guarantor, based in Asia. (A Richter abstract owned by the musician Eric Clapton sold for $22 million Tuesday night at Christie’s.)

PEOPLE STILL LOVE STILL Phillips also offered an Abstract Expressionist rarity: Clyfford Still’s 1948 abstract, “Untitled,” never before at auction, was estimated at $12 million to $18 million. The painting, which features a flame-red field, resembled a more monumental 1947 abstract by Still that soared to a double-the-estimate $61.7 million at Sotheby’s in 2011, sparking a new interest in the American artist. Phillips’s latest test of the Still market saw two bidders push the price to $13.7 million.

GUARANTEES MARCH ON The detail of the financial inducements Phillips used to wrest these eight-figure lots from Sotheby’s and Christie’s remains confidential, but the sellers of both the Richter and the Still had been guaranteed minimum prices backed by third parties. In all, 10 lots were guaranteed by third parties, with three more backed by the auction house itself. Phillips, in line with Sotheby’s and Christie’s, now releases a revised net price immediately after the sale if a lot has been bought by a third party who has been paid a fee. Richter’s “Düsenjäger,” at $25.6 million, deducted such a fee.

NAKED AMBITION Roy Lichtenstein’s 1994 canvas, “Nudes in Mirror,” was estimated at $20 million and was offered “naked,” without any guarantees. When the painting was exhibited in 2005 in Austria, a woman slashed it with a knife, but the canvas has been restored, as detailed in Phillips’s catalog. It sold to a lone telephone bid from a Russian-speaking buyer for $21.5 million.

NEW BIG BUYER At Christie’s, Yusaku Maezawa was the buyer of Picasso’s 1938 colorful “Buste de femme (Dora Maar)” for $22.6 million. He was the buyer of a 1982 canvas by Jean-Michel Basquiat that sold at Christie’s for $57.3 million last spring, a high for the artist.

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