Claude Monet - Meules, milieu du jour [Haystacks, midday]

Claude Monet

France 1840-1926

Meules, milieu du jour [Haystacks, midday] 1890 Giverny, France

oil on canvas

Purchased 1979 1979.16

These stacks of wheat, tightly thatched for protection against the weather, stood in a field behind the artist's house at Giverny, a village 60 kilometres from central Paris. From the late summer of 1890 until winter 1891, Claude Monet painted these haystacks at least 25 times. It was the changing effects of light, rather than the stacks themselves, that fascinated him. He faced a dilemma: the more he focused on fleeting atmospheric effects, the longer and more involved his painting process became.

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