Les meules au jardin des Étincelles à Criqueboeuf

Les meules au jardin des Étincelles à Criqueboeuf at the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne, with its Normandy haystack subject, inevitably invites comparison with Monet's famous Haystacks series of 1890-91 — the serial investigation of changing light effects on agricultural forms that became one of the iconic works of Post-Impressionist painting. Vuillard's approach to the same rural subject could not be more different from Monet's: where Monet studied the atmospheric transformation of light and shadow across the stacks' surfaces at different times of day and seasons, Vuillard treats the haystacks as formal elements within a garden composition — their rounded, compact masses providing strong geometric forms against the more open surrounding vegetation. The Criqueboeuf property in Calvados was one of the Normandy locations Vuillard visited with the Hessel family, and the garden context of these haystacks — agricultural forms within a domestic garden setting — is characteristic of his practice of finding in the landscapes of his social world the same combination of the domestic and the natural that defined his interior subjects.

On cardboard, Vuillard builds the haystack forms through compact, rounded brushwork that gives them a solid, almost sculptural presence in the garden setting. The surrounding vegetation is treated with looser, more dispersed marks, establishing a contrast between the dense mass of the haystacks and the open, dappled field around them.