Stacks of Wheat (End of Summer)
Claude Monet (1840 to 1926) · 1890 to 1891
Two conical stacks of harvested wheat stand in a field near Monet's house at Giverny, one large and one small, with a line of trees and hills behind and a soft evening sky above. The subject could hardly be simpler, and that was the point. In the late summer of 1890 Monet began painting the stacks again and again, in the morning, at noon, at sunset, in mist, frost and snow, and by the following spring he had about twenty five canvases. The Art Institute owns six of them, the largest group in any museum, and they hang together in this gallery so that you can watch the same field change hour by hour.
Look at the stacks in this version, painted at the end of summer in warm afternoon light. The shadowed side is built of violet, blue and rose rather than grey, and the sunlit side glows with orange and pink. The surface is thick and layered; Monet returned to the canvases in his studio to adjust the colours so that the series would hang together. Then compare the neighbouring pictures, where the same stacks turn cold blue under snow or dissolve into a pink haze at sunset. Monet said his aim was to paint not the object but the envelope of air and light around it.
The series was shown in Paris in 1891 and sold out within days, the first great commercial success of Monet's career. Chicago collectors, led by Bertha Palmer, bought several stacks at once, which is why the city has so many. The paintings also changed the course of art: Kandinsky said that seeing a Monet stack in Moscow in 1895 taught him that a picture did not need a recognisable subject. A memorable detail is the small stack on the left, which in some versions of the series disappears entirely, absorbed into the light.
Did You Know? Bertha Palmer, wife of a Chicago hotel magnate, at one point owned nine of Monet's stacks of wheat, and several of them ended up in this museum.
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