Haferfeld mit Mohnblumen

In the summer of 1890 Monet worked his way across the fields just outside Giverny, the village where he had settled and where, that same year, he finally bought the house he had been renting. This oat field scattered with red poppies is one of five canvases he made of these fields that summer. He was beginning to think in series now, painting the same patch of ground again and again as the light shifted. That autumn he would start on the grainstacks in the next field over, the pictures that made the idea famous. The poppies here are barely flowers, just quick dabs of red laid over the green and gold.