Meules, milieu du jour

In the autumn of 1890 Monet finally bought the house at Giverny he had been renting for seven years. The stacks he painted that season stood in a field just beyond his garden and belonged to a neighbouring farmer. They held wheat, built up to keep the grain dry until the threshing, and they stayed standing for months.

He worked the series from late summer 1890 into the winter, carrying several canvases into the field at once and switching between them as the light moved. 15 of them went on show at Durand-Ruel's Paris gallery in May 1891 and sold almost immediately, at prices that settled his finances for good.

This is the midday one. The National Gallery of Australia bought it in 1979, and in the strongest light of the series the edges of the stacks dissolve into the heat instead of casting much shadow.