Claude Monet

Already in the 1870s, Monet had frequently returned to sites that fascinated him and had depicted motifs that interested him in variations, pairs, or groups of works. Around 1890 he began to systematize this serial approach by intentionally creating large groups of paintings that were carefully attuned to each other and exhibited as a unified whole. The first of these methodical, coherent groups of works was devoted to the unassuming motif of grainstacks in the fields around the artist’s house in Giverny. As early as May 1891, Monet showed fifteen of these paintings in the Paris gallery of Paul Durand-Ruel, where they were exhibited together in the same room.

The repetitive, almost obsessive depiction of the same object again and again might suggest a kind of symbolic idealization of the motif. However, the constant variation of color, shadow, and light, as well as the fact that Monet quite obviously represented the grainstacks at different times of the day and year, indicate that the motif itself was of little importance to him. On the contrary, the surface of the grainstack, depicted at close range, served as a kind of projection surface or screen (écran), enabling the artist to explore the subtlest changes in atmosphere—what he called the enveloppe, the enshrouding of an object in color, air, and light. “To me the motif is insignificant. What I want to reproduce is what lies between the motif and me,” Monet explained in an interview of 1895. He had already expressed a similar sentiment four years earlier, when he assured a visitor to his exhibition at Durand-Ruel’s gallery: “For me, a landscape does not exist in its own right, since its appearance changes at every moment; but the surrounding atmosphere brings it to life—the air and the light, which vary continuously. . . . For me, it is only the surrounding atmosphere which gives subjects their true value.” 

Here Monet gave expression to the two central premises of his late Impressionist work: the ideal of the subjective observation of nature—the interplay of impression and sensation—and his focus on the subtle rendering of fleeting atmospheric effects. Like other works from his later series, Monet’s Grainstack in the Sunlight, Snow Effect was derived from studies created en plein air in front of the motif, which he later carefully reworked in the studio.

In the four-volume catalogue raisonné of Monet’s paintings produced by Daniel Wildenstein, Grainstack in the Sunlight, Snow Effect is listed as no. 1287 (vol. 3, p. 497). Other paintings from this series are now in collections including the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Daniel Zamani

Exposition d'œuvres récentes de Claude Monet, Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris, May 4–16, 1891, no. 15

Exposition de tableaux de Monet, Pissarro, Renoir et Sisley, Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris, April 1899, no. 33

Exposition des peintres impressionnistes, La Libre Esthétique, Brussels, February 25–March 29, 1904, no. 106

Exposition d'art moderne, Manzi, Joyant & Cie., Hôtel de la revue, Paris, June 5–July 6, 1912, no. 143

Œuvres importantes de Monet, Pissarro, Renoir et Sisley, Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris, January 5–24, 1925, no. 10

Exposition du Centenaire Monet – Rodin, Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris, December 7, 1940–March 18, 1941, no. 43

Claude Monet 1840–1926: A tribute to Daniel Wildenstein and Katia Granoff, Wildenstein, New York, April 27–June 15, 2007, no. 42

Impressionism: The Art of Landscape, Museum Barberini, Potsdam, January 21–May 28, 2017

Claude Monet: The Truth of Nature, Denver Art Museum, October 20, 2019–February 2, 2020

Monet: Orte, Museum Barberini, Potsdam, February 22–July 19, 2020, no. 74

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

May 9, 1891, Paul Durand-Ruel, Paris, purchased from the artist
n.d., Private collection, France, inherited from the above
October 2000, Art trade, acquired from the above

Julien Leclercq, “Petites expositions: Galerie Durand-Ruel,” in La Chronique des arts et de la curiosité 15 (April 15, 1899), p. 131

Exposition d'Œuvres récentes de Claude Monet, exh. cat. Paris 1891, no. 15, p. 16

Georges Lecomte, L’ art impressionniste. D’après la collection privée de M. Durand-Ruel, Paris 1892, p. 100

Exposition de tableaux de Monet, Pissarro, Renoir & Sisley, exh. cat. Paris 1899, no. 33

Exposition des peintres impressionnistes, exh. cat. Brussels 1904, no. 106, p. 40

Andrea Mellerio, “Exposition des peintres impressionnistes à la 'Libre Esthétique',” in La Chronique des arts et de la curiosité 13 (March 26, 1904), p. 104

Georges Grappe: Claude Monet, Paris 1909, p. 41

Exposition d'art moderne, exh. cat. Paris 1912, no. 143

Gustave Geffroy, Claude Monet: Sa vie, son temps, son œuvre, vol. 4, Paris 1922, p. 189

Camille Mauclair, Claude Monet, Paris 1924, p. 17

Œuvres importantes de Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Sisley, exh. cat. Paris 1925, no. 10

Octave Maus, Trente années de lutte pour l'art: 1884–1914, Brussels 1926, p. 324

Exposition du Centenaire Monet–Rodin, exh. cat. Paris 1940, no. 43

Camille Mauclair, Claude Monet et l'impressionnisme, Paris 1943, p. 19/20, plate 22

Oscar Reuterswärd, Monet: En konstnarhistorik, Stockholm 1948, p. 194, ill. p. 192

Curt Schweicher, Monet, Bern 1949, no. 47, p. 31, plate 47

Georges Besson, Claude Monet, Paris 1949, ill. plate 49

Donald E. Gordon, Modern art exhibitions 1900–1916: Selected catalogue documentation, vol. 2, Munich 1974, p. 90

Daniel Wildenstein, Claude Monet: Biographie et catalogue raisonné, vol. 3, Lausanne 1979, no. 1287, p. 38, 41/42, 144, ill. p. 145

Grace Seiberling, Monet's Series, New York/London 1981, no. 30, p. 93, 100, 359

John House, “Monet in 1890”, in Aspects of Monet: A Symposium on the Artist's Life and Times, ed. John Rewald and Frances Weitzenhoffer, New York 1984, p. 128, 138

Charles S. Moffett, “Monet's Haystacks,” in Aspects of Monet: A Symposium on the Artist's Life and Times, ed. John Rewald and Frances Weitzenhoffer, New York 1984, p. 42, 142, 153, 157, 159

Richard R. Brettell, “Monet's Haystacks Reconsidered,” in The Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 11, 1 (1984), p. 4–21, here no. 15, p. 5–7, 10–15, 20/21, ill. p. 18

Daniel Wildenstein, Claude Monet: Biographie et catalogue raisonné, vol. 4, Lausanne 1985, p. 4

Monet in the '90s: The Series Paintings, exh. cat. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 1989, p. 98, 100/1, 274/75

Daniel Wildenstein, Claude Monet: Biographie et catalogue raisonné, vol. 5, Lausanne 1991, p. 296–298, 300, 303, 307

Claude Monet 1840–1926, exh. cat. The Art Institute, Chicago 1995, p. 18, 220/21.

Paul Hayes Tucker, Claude Monet: Life and Art, New Haven 1995, p. 141–43

Daniel Wildenstein, Monet oder der Triumph des Impressionismus: Catalogue Raisonné. Werkverzeichnis, vol. 1, Cologne 1996, p. 273–75, 279

Daniel Wildenstein, Monet: Catalogue Raisonné. Werkverzeichnis, vol. 3, Cologne 1996, no. 1287, p. 502, ill. p. 497

Daniel Wildenstein, Monet: Catalogue Raisonné. Werkverzeichnis, vol. 4, Cologne 1996, p. 1017–19, 1021, 1024, 1027

Impressionists in Winter: Effets de Neige, exh. cat. The Phillips Collection, Washington 1998, p. 122

Monet, Renoir and the Impressionist Landscape, exh. cat. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa 1999, p. 118

Claude Monet 1840–1926: A tribute to Daniel Wildenstein and Katia Granoff, exh. cat. Wildenstein, New York 2007, p. 42

Impressionism: The Art of Landscape, exh. cat. Museum Barberini, Potsdam 2017, no. 86, p. 200, 202, ill. p. 221

Claude Monet: The Truth of Nature, exh. cat. Denver Art Museum, Denver 2019, no. 74, p. 30, 176, ill. p. 174 (detail), 186

Monet: Orte, exh. cat. Museum Barberini, Potsdam 2020, no. 74, ill. p. 174 (detail), 186