Grainstacks, in Bright Sunlight

In the summer of 1890 Monet set himself a stubborn task in a field near his home at Giverny. He would paint the same grainstacks again and again, one canvas after another, chasing the way the light changed on them through the hours and the seasons. He wanted to catch what he called the envelope of air and light around a thing, not the thing itself. Fifteen of these stacks hung together in a Paris show in 1891 and sold quickly, and for the first time in his life Monet was comfortable. This canvas belongs to a moment of full, flat sunlight. Alfred Pope, an American iron magnate, bought it while the paint was barely dry, and it has hung in his Connecticut house ever since.