

Claude Monet (French, 1840–1926)
Oil on canvas
25 3/4 x 36 1/4 in. (65.4 x 92.1 cm)
Signed and dated (lower left): Claude Monet 91
H. O. Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929 (29.100.109)
Between summer 1890 and winter 1891, Monet executed about thirty paintings of the haystacks in a field near his house at Giverny. In the midst of this effort, he wrote to the critic Gustave Geoffroy: "I am working very hard, struggling with a series of different effects (haystacks), but at this season the sun sets so fast I cannot follow it. . . . The more I continue, the more I see that a great deal of work is necessary in order to succeed in rendering what I seek." Although Monet had painted multiple versions of a single subject earlier, Haystacks was the first group that he exhibited as a series; in 1891, fifteen were shown at the Galerie Durand-Ruel in Paris.







