Claude Monet’s artistic series, Wheatstacks (End of Summer), is renowned for its depiction of stacks of harvested wheat in various lighting and weather conditions. Monet painted twenty-five canvases as a part of this series, which he began working on near the end of the summer of 1890 and completed through the following spring. Five paintings with a similar subject also existed before this series.
Monet’s purpose was to capture the effect of light through color on wheatstacks during different seasons like autumn and winter, as well as weather changes such as sunrise, sunset, frost, and fog. Through his use of pastel colors combined with ochre pigments or glazes that emphasized each form in space, Monet captured each haystack’s unique ambiance.
Wheatstacks: Snow Effect, Morning is one particularly notable painting from this series. Painted in 1891, it captures a solitary stack covered in snow under the morning light’s softness. The textured surface produced by impasto brushstrokes creates an appealing composition while suggesting more detail than actually exists. This technique causes viewers to find themselves deeply disregarding reality by concentrating solely on their senses’ pleasure or immersion into nature’s beauty.
Overall, Monet used the Haystacks painting exhibition to exhibit his perceived traditional subject present mostly in rural scenes but with added aesthetics’ advantages created by different natural elements presenting them at different times and weather effects—proving being able to observe deep enough how everything interacts can go unappreciated if not carefully recorded like he did throughout this series.
