Claude Monet : “Wheat Stacks (End of Summer)” (1890-1891)

Monet often worked in series, painting the same subject under different conditions. He explained that, “For me, a landscape hardly exists at all as a landscape, because its appearance is constantly changing; but it lives by virtue of its surroundings, the air and the light which vary continually.” The motif was therefore insignificant. “What I want,” he said, “is to reproduce what exists between the motif and me.”

Consisting of twenty-five canvases that he began in late summer of 1890 and continued until spring of the following year, Haystacks (or more properly, Wheatstacks) was the first such series that he exhibited. The stacks belonged to his farmer-neighbor, Monsieur Quéruel, and were situated just outside his door.

Initially he had asked his stepdaughter, Blanche Hoschedé, to bring him two canvases — one for sunny and one for overcast weather — but as he became attuned to many nuanced and transient effects of light that each warranted his separate attention, his original two canvases expanded into a wheelbarrow full. Rising at 3:30 a.m., he worked on each for as long as the desired conditions persisted before moving on to the next.

In May 1891 fifteen of these canvases were exhibited in the Galerie Durand-Ruel and all sold within just a few days. Camille Pissarro remarked that they “breathe contentment,” whereas Octave Mirbeau described the series as representing “what lies beyond progress itself.” In his memoirs, Wassily Kandinsky wrote that Haystacks had suddenly made clear “the unsuspected power of the palette, which I had not understood before and which surpassed my wildest dreams.”