1890
oil
canvas
From the collection of Art Institute of Chicago
Dominant colour
Stacks of Wheat (Sunset, Snow Effect) is a 1890 oil by Claude Monet, a Impressionism work, held at Art Institute of Chicago.
Claude Monet painted tall wheat stacks at sunset in winter light. He used thick, rough brushstrokes on canvas. The colors shift from deep purple shadows to warm gold highlights. Monet worked on this series for two years. He set up multiple easels outside to catch changing light. Each canvas shows the same stacks, but in different weather and time of day. See this painting up close at the Art Institute of Chicago.
The monumental stacks that Claude Monet depicted in his series Stacks of Wheat rose fifteen to twenty feet and stood just outside the artist’s farmhouse at Giverny. Through 1890 and 1891, he worked on this series both in the field, painting simultaneously at several easels, and in the studio, refining pictorial harmonies. In May 1891, Monet hung fifteen of these canvases next to each other in one small room in the Galerie Durand-Ruel in Paris. An unprecedented critical and financial success, the exhibition marked a breakthrough in Monet’s career, as well as in the history of French art. In…
The artist (d. 1926); sold to Durand-Ruel, Paris, July 20, 1891, for 3,200 francs [this and the following per Durand-Ruel, Paris, stock book for 1891–1901 (no. 1075, as Meules, effet de neige, soleil couchant), as confirmed by Paul-Louis Durand-Ruel and Flavie Durand-Ruel, Durand-Ruel Archives, to the Art Institute of Chicago, Feb. 5, 2013, curatorial object file]; sold to Durand-Ruel, New York, Oct. 30, 1891; sold to Potter Palmer, Chicago, February 29, 1892, for $1,300 [per Durand-Ruel, New York, stock book for 1888–1893 (no. 847, as Meules, effet de neige, soleil couchant), as confirmed by…
Paris, Galeries Durand-Ruel, Exposition d’oeuvres récentes de Claude Monet, May 1891, cat. 13, as Meules. (Coucher du soleil; effet de neige.). Boston, Copley Society, Loan Collection of Paintings by Claude Monet and Eleven Sculptures by Auguste Rodin, Mar. 1905, cat. 84, as Meules. Effet de Neige, Soleil Couchant. 1891. Lent by Mrs. Potter Palmer. Art Institute of Chicago, Paintings from the Collection of Mrs. Potter Palmer, May 10–Nov., 1910, cat. 36, as Haystacks in winter. Poughkeepsie (N.Y.), Vassar College, Art Department Picture of the Month, series 1 (circuit exhibition, organized by…
Read the full account in the museum source.
Oscar-Claude Monet was born in Paris on November 14, 1840, and raised from the age of five in Le Havre, where he began selling charcoal caricatures as a teenager.
See the richer artist page
