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An $81M painting inspired the design of this unusual phone

A render of the Realme 13 Pro in Monet Gold.
Realme

We’ve recently welcomed Realme back to the global phone market with the Realme GT 6, and it has wasted no time in getting us ready for its next release. It has teased the forthcoming Realme 13 Pro series and revealed it has worked with the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston on a Claude Monet-inspired color scheme for a pair of special-edition models.

The Realme 13 Pro phones use colors and a design inspired by two of the impressionist painter’s most recognizable works, Grainstack (Sunset) and Water Lilies. The Monet Gold phone influenced by Grainstack is the only one the company has shown off at this stage, and you can see the subtle gold tones and the reflections on the surface of the device, which evoke the sunset in the scene from one of  Monet’s famous and incredibly valuable paintings. How valuable? Auction house Christies sold Grainstack (Sunset) for $81,447,500 in 2016 to an anonymous buyer, while another in the series painted by Monet reached $110,747,000 in 2019 at Sotherby’s to become the most valuable piece of impressionist art in the world at the time.

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It will be joined by a second special-edition phone in a color called Monet Purple, which is inspired by the Water Lilies painting. Both phones will have a frosted glass finish, which Realme says will be “crafted with a unique flash gold process, reproduced by millions of shimmering particles coming together to emulate Monet’s brushstrokes on the frosted high-gloss glass, capturing the fleeting moments in his paintings.”

Amber en CG Video 15s 1920x1080 super gold

Realme often excels at design, something we’ve noted with its other collaborations, beginning with those made with Japanese designer Fukasawa Naoto and spanning right up to its special editions made with well-known brands like Coca-Cola. It’ll be interesting to see how a collaboration with an art museum works, particularly when it’s referencing such well-known works.

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What else do we know about the Realme 13 Pro series? It’s going to have two Sony Lytia camera sensors on the back, with one of them being the latest LYT-701, and some more AI technology inside the camera too. The Realme 13 Pro will be accompanied by a Realme 13 Pro Plus model, and it looks like all versions of the Realme 13 Pro series will be available in the Monet colors. The only release information on the new phones is they will be released in India in the near future.

Andy Boxall
Andy is a Senior Writer at Digital Trends, where he concentrates on mobile technology, a subject he has written about for…
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