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Stack of Wheat

A snowy landscape in cool tones featuring a prominent, snow-dusted haystack in reddish brown in front of a row of red-brown trees and low, blue mountains, all beheath a pink-gray strip of sky.
CC0 Public Domain Designation

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  • A snowy landscape in cool tones featuring a prominent, snow-dusted haystack in reddish brown in front of a row of red-brown trees and low, blue mountains, all beheath a pink-gray strip of sky.

Date:

1890/91

Artist:

Claude Monet
French, 1840-1926

About this artwork

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 this view, and in nearly all of the autumn views in the series, the conical tops of the stacks break the horizon and push into the sky. But in most of the winter views, which constitute the core of the series, the stacks seem wrapped by bands of hill and field, as if bedded down for the season. For Monet, the stack was a resonant symbol of sustenance and survival. He followed this group with further series depicting poplars, the facade of Rouen Cathedral, and, later, his own garden at Giverny. The Art Institute has the largest group of Monet’s Stacks of Wheat in the world.

Status

On View, Gallery 243

Department

Painting and Sculpture of Europe

Artist

Claude Monet

Title

Stack of Wheat

Place

France (Artist's nationality:)

Date  Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

1890–1891

Medium

Oil on canvas

Inscriptions

Inscribed at lower left: Claude Monet 91

Dimensions

65.8 × 92.3 cm (25 15/16 × 36 3/8 in.)

Credit Line

Purchased with funds provided by the Searle Family Trust; Major Acquisitions Centennial Endowment; through prior acquisitions of the Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson and Potter Palmer collections; through prior bequest of Jerome Friedman

Reference Number

1983.29

IIIF Manifest  The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn more.

https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/111318/manifest.json

Extended information about this artwork

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.

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