Claude Monet

Monet’s paintings from this series bear the French title Meules, a word that can be translated as “stacks.” For a long time the title was misinterpreted as Haystacks; however, the objects in Monet’s paintings are actually sheaves of grain. In the agriculture of nineteenth-century Normandy, conical stacks of unthreshed grain were covered with straw or hay to protect the valuable harvest from moisture and rot. Monet, who had a fine sensibility for the structure of the landscape, must have been fascinated by these quasi-sculptural objects of considerable size that appeared at the same time every year in the fields surrounding his house, covering the meadows in a kind of temporary installation. The motif also had symbolic character for the predominantly agricultural community of Giverny, and at the same time allowed Monet, by means of his serial approach, to explore the cyclical transformation of nature in the changing of the seasons—and with it the very passage of time.

This work has a special place among the twenty-five versions of grainstacks that Monet painted within the space of only a few months in 1890 and 1891. The strong visual diagonal introduces a dynamic element into the composition, which the artist strengthened by means of unusually intense colors and a backlit effect. More than any other version of the motif, the composition shows the influence of the colored Japanese woodcuts that Monet, like many of his fellow artists, so enthusiastically collected.

In the late nineteenth century this picture, along with eight other variations of the Grainstacks, was in the possession of the Chicago collector and patroness Bertha Palmer. In the four-volume catalogue raisonné of Monet’s paintings produced by Daniel Wildenstein, it is listed as no. 1273 (vol. 3, p. 490).

Daniel Zamani

A Loan Exhibition of Paintings by Claude Monet for the Benefit of the Children of Giverny, Wildenstein, New York, April 11–May 12, 1945, no. 59

Monet: Orte, Museum Barberini, Potsdam, February 22–July 19, 2020

Impressionism: The Hasso Plattner Collection, Museum Barberini, Potsdam, from September 5, 2020

July 2, 1891, Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris, purchased from the artist
March 7, 1892, Potter Palmer, Chicago, acquired from the above
1892, Durand-Ruel Galleries, New York, acquired from the above
April 19, 1892, W. C. Van Horne, Montreal, acquired from the above
1892, Durand-Ruel Galleries, New York, acquired from the above
November 22, 1892, Potter Palmer, Chicago, acquired from the above
by 1945, Honoré & Grace Palmer, inherited from the above
May 14, 1986, Christie’s, New York, lot 18
Private collection USA, acquired at the above sale
April 14, 2019, Sotheby’s, New York, lot 8, consigned by the above

A loan exhibition of paintings by Claude Monet for the benefit of the Children of Giverny, exh. cat. Wildenstein, New York 1945, no. 59

Daniel Wildenstein, Claude Monet: Biographie et catalogue raisonné, vol. 3, Lausanne 1979, no. 1273, p. 140, ill. p. 141

Daniel Wildenstein, Claude Monet: Biographie et catalogue raisonné, vol. 5, Lausanne 1991, p. 47

Marianne Alphant, Claude Monet: Une vie dans le paysage, Paris 1993, p. 491

Daniel Wildenstein, Monet: Catalogue Raisonné. Werkverzeichnis, vol. 3, Cologne 1996, no. 1273, p. 488, ill. p. 490

Claude Monet 1840–1926: A tribute to Daniel Wildenstein and Katia Granoff, exh. cat. Wildenstein, New York 2007, p. 112