Haystacks (Effect of Snow and Sun)

By 1891 Monet had settled at Giverny, and he had started doing something he had never done before, working one plain subject over and over as the light shifted. The subject was grainstacks in a field near his house, stacks of harvested wheat taller than a person, left standing through the seasons. He painted about 25 of them across a single autumn and winter, chasing the sun and the frost. This canvas catches a low winter sun striking snow, so the stack casts long coloured shadows while its flank glows warm against the cold ground. In May 1891 he hung 15 of these together at the Durand-Ruel gallery in Paris, the first time he presented a single motif as a full series, and they sold within days. This one reached the Metropolitan through the Havemeyer bequest in 1929.