Stack of Wheat

Stack of Wheat from 1890 at the Art Institute of Chicago is among the earliest canvases in the formal Haystacks series — painted as Monet was first conceiving the systematic serial project rather than making the pre-serial informal studies of earlier years. The Art Institute holds more Haystacks paintings than any other institution — twelve of the approximately thirty canvases in the series — making Chicago the principal site for understanding the series as a unified statement. The critical and commercial success of the Haystacks exhibition at Durand-Ruel in May 1891 transformed both Monet's market position and the critical vocabulary available for discussing his work. The philosopher Henri Bergson, whose ideas about duration and temporal experience were in formation during the same years, later cited Monet's serial paintings as visual analogues for his philosophical investigations; the poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote movingly about the haystacks in his letters from Paris. Together the Art Institute's twelve canvases constitute one of the most important holdings of any single artist's work in any American museum.

Monet builds the stack's form through layered touches of warm ochre, orange, and pink on the lit face, transitioning to cooler mauves and purples in the shadow. The ground around the stack and the background fields are handled with equal chromatic attentiveness. The sky is loosely indicated, deferring to the stack's prominence.