Haystacks (Monet series)

Haystacks (Monet series)

Haystacks is the common English title for a series of impressionist paintings by Claude Monet. The principal subject of each painting in the series is stacks of harvested wheat (or possibly barley or oats: the original French title, Les Meules à Giverny, simply means The Stacks at Giverny, obviously concerning stacks of straw). The title refers primarily to a twenty-five canvas series (Wildenstein Index Numbers 1266–1290) which Monet began near the end of the summer of 1890 and continued through the following spring, though Monet also produced five earlier paintings using this same stack subject. A precursor to the series is the 1884 Haystack Near Giverny (Pushkin Museum). The series is famous for the way in which Monet repeated the same subject to show the differing light and atmosphere at different times of day, across the seasons and in many types of weather. The series is among Monet's most notable works. The largest Haystacks collections are held at the Musée d'Orsay and Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris, and in the Art Institute of Chicago. The Art Institute of Chicago collection includes six of the twenty-five Haystacks. Other collections include the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Metropolitan Museum and Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo, and the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris. Other museums that hold parts of this series include the Getty Center in Los Angeles, the Hill-Stead Museum in Farmington, Connecticut (which also has one of five from the earlier 1888–89 harvest), the Scottish National Gallery, the National Gallery (England), Museum Barberini, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Kunsthaus Zürich, Tel Aviv Museum of Art and the Shelburne Museum, Vermont. Private collections hold the remaining Haystacks paintings.

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Equestrian Portrait of Count Stanislas Potocki.

Cornelia Claesdr Voogt.

Haystacks (Monet series)

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See also