Title: Wheatstacks
Description: Haystacks is a title of a series of impressionist paintings by Claude Monet. The primary subjects of all of the paintings in the series are stacks of hay in the field after the harvest season. The title refers primarily to a twenty-five canvas series (Wildenstein Index Number 1266-1290) begun in the end of summer of 1890 and continued through the following spring, using that year's harvest. Some use a broader definition of the title to refer to other paintings by Monet with this same theme. The series is known for its thematic use of repetition to show differences in perception of light across various times of day, seasons, and types of weather. The subjects were painted in fields near Monet's home in Giverny, France. The series is among Monet's most notable works. Although the largest collections of Monet's work is held in Paris at the Musée d'Orsay and Musée Marmottan Monet, other notable Monet collections are in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Metropolitan Museum and Museum of Modern Art in New York, and at the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo. Six of the twenty-five haystacks pieces in this series are currently housed at the Art Institute of Chicago. Other museums that hold parts of this series in their collection include: the Getty Center in Los Angeles, the Hill-Stead Museum in Farmington, Connecticut (which also has one of five from the earlier 1888-9 harvest), the National Gallery of Scotland, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Kunsthaus Zürich, and the Shelburne Museum, Vermont. Several private collections also hold Haystack paintings.
Author(s): Claude Monet