Grainstack (Sunset)

Grainstack (Sunset) from 1891 at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston is among the most intensely atmospheric of all the Haystacks canvases — the low winter or autumn sun behind the stack flooding the entire composition with warm copper, orange, and crimson. The sunset variants were among the most commercially sought-after when the series was exhibited at Durand-Ruel in May 1891: the warmth and chromatic drama of the sunset palette made them immediately appealing to collectors who had been following Monet's increasingly bold color development through the 1880s. Pissarro, who attended the exhibition opening, wrote to his son Lucien about the effect: the sunset canvases were received with something like awe by the crowd, who recognized in them a chromatic ambition that made even Monet's Étretat and Belle-Île paintings look restrained by comparison. The MFA Boston holds several Haystacks variants, and the sunset canvas anchors the institution's account of the series at its most dramatically chromatic extreme. Kandinsky famously described seeing a Haystacks sunset variant in Munich that he initially could not identify as a subject at all — and understanding from that bewilderment that subject matter was not the essential element of painting.

The low sunset light creates the painting's dominant warm chromatic key — deep orange, copper, crimson — with the sky behind the stack carrying complementary cool tones of blue and violet. The stack itself is reduced to a glowing mass with minimal surface detail, its form established by the contrast of its warm lit face against the darker surroundings.