Haystacks as exhibited in the New York Museum of Metropolitan Art

Monet’s Haystack series comprises 25 to 28 paintings which were executed in 1891. In the same year, 15 of these were exhibited and immediately sold. This was not only a monetary success taking account of the adverse reactions that Monet’s previous works had received. All of Monet’s haystack paintings are executed as oil and measure about 25 × 39 inches, i.e 60 cm × 100 cm.

A second series, usually referred to as the Giverny series, showing hay- or grainstacks was executed by the Monet one year earlier (1888) from the preceding harvest at Giverny. All three show each two grainstacks in front of a hill under the influence of different seasons, weather and light. One shows the stacks in the light of evening sun, another during daylight, set against a blue sky and a line of trees (poplars) while the third shows the haystacks in a white and frozen landscape under either a rising or a setting sun.

Giverny, 1889: Two Haystacks at sunset

Giverny, 1889: Daylight with blue sky and poplars

Giverny, 1889: Haystacks in Winterly Landscape

However, typically, the Haystack paintings are associated with the works from Monet’s second, larger, series. The series comprises 25 paintings, most of the showing each two haystacks. The artist began working on his Haystacks series in 1890 and with this he entered also a new phase: He studied his subjects under the influence of changing light and weather conditions. Several of his most famous series were created this way: starting out with the haystacks, Rouen Cathedral, the House of Parliament, Water Lilies or Mornings at the Seine should follow. All were painted during different seasons, different times of the day but basically keeping the same angle for the motif. Thus, Monet was able to reproduce a perfect impression of the changing impression a motif would make during a day and across the seasons.

Monet used a method where he worked on a number of paintings at the same time by spending just a little while on each before moving on to the next. This meant he had to work very quickly as he worked from one canvas to another. His stepdaughter, Blanche, helped him in this by sliding the canvases onto his easel.

Monet’s haystacks were a considerable influence on latter day painters like Vlaminck, Derain, Kadinsky and the Fauves. Kadinsky in fact, saw Monet’s paintings in Moscow and Munich and said that they had a profound influence over him.

The majority of the Haystack series canvases fetched a minimum of 1000 francs each. This not only helped Monet who had often monetary problems, but also hiked up the rate of Monet’s paintings further. He used the money from the sale of these paintings to buy the house and surrounding land in Giverny. This is where he got the water lily pond built, which he later used as the subject of his paintings.

Monet Haystack Gallery

Grainstack in Sunshine

Haystacks at the End of Summer

Grainstack in sunlight

Haystack on a Foggy Morning

Haystack at morning in a snowy landscape

Wheatstacks at sunset covered with snow

Poppies appear in several paintings by Claude Monet: The Poppy Field, near Argenteuil or at Giverny and Poppies blooming are the most famous ones.

The Poppy Field, near Argenteuil was executed by Monet as oil on canvas, today exhibited at the Musee d’Orsay in Paris. The painting measures 19-5/8×25-5/8 inches. Poppies blooming was painted in 1873 and conjures up a feeling of taking a walk through the fields on a day in the summer months.

In the painting, Poppies blooming, Monet tried to capture the ever changing quality of light. He based the work on the fields of wild flowers just outside a place called Argenteuil. After returning from England, Monet had lived in Argenteuil from 1871 to 1878. The colorful landscape of the region permitted Monet to work on the concept of »en plein air« painting. This work of art shows how passionate Monet was about the use of vibrant colors. He has used bright blobs of red to depict the poppies, which are scattered across green fields. In the foreground, Monet painted the figures of his wife, Camille and his son, Jean.

The figures are almost like sketches and have been painted using simple, quick strokes of white, black and violet. The woman and child can again be seen in the background. Monet has created two distinct color zones in the painting – one in which the dominant color is red and another where the main color is bluish-green. The contours of the landscape have been softened and colorful blobs of paint which signify poppies provide an overall rhythm. This work can be considered as the first step towards abstraction.

Poppies was put on display at the first Impressionist exhibition that was organized at a photographer, known as Nadar’s studio in 1874.

List of Poppy Paintings by Monet

• Poppies at Argenteuil, 1873
• Poppy Field, Argenteuil, 1875
• Poppy Field near Vetheuil, 1875
• Lane in the Poppy Fields, Ile Saint-Martin, 1880
• Poppies near Vetheuil, 1880
• Red and Pink Poppies, 1883
• Vase of Poppies, 1883
• White Poppy, 1883
• Poppy Field at Giverny, 1885
• Poppy Field in a Hollow near Giverny, 1885
• Poppies at Giverny, 1887
• Oat and Poppy Field, 1890

The sunflowers that Monet used as the subject for his painting grew along the steps that led to the garden of his house in Vétheuil. The painting was shown in 1882 at the seventh Impressionist exhibition. Monet’s technique got him the admiration of his critics.
Vincent van Gogh who is also known for his series on sunflowers saw Monet’s Bouquet of Sunflowers at Paul Durand-Ruel’s gallery in Paris in 1886. Van Gogh said of Monet’s painting:

“Gauguin was telling me the other day that he had seen a picture by Claude Monet of sunflowers in a large Japanese vase, very fine, but – he likes mine better. I don’t agree.”

Bouquet of Sunflowers is part of Monet’s series on seven different kinds of flowers which includes chrysanthemums and dahlias. Among all of these, Sunflowers is the most well-known. This series of paintings is in fact one of the very few examples of still lifes in Monet’s works.

Claude Monet: Impression, Sunrise. French: Impression, soleil levant Claude Monet: Impression, Sunrise. French: Impression, soleil levant (Click image to enlarge)

Impressions, Sunrise shows the port of Le Havre in the morning. In the background, some of the ships anchor; their silhouette disappears in the mist, though. In the foreground three small boats appear dimly. The water reflects the light of the rising sun.

Monet composed the majority of the painting in blue and violet, but the reflection of the sun on the water is painted in orange. The ships in the background serve as a structuring element and create linear structures. The diagonally arranged boats create the impression of the spatial distance, while Monet renounced at composition and further spatial effects. The aim of Impression, Sunrise is just the accurate reproduction of the very impression and its resulting mood. The atmospheric effect dominates and marginalizes the importance of the object’s shape. In order to capture the constant change of light and the flicker of the air clearly, Monet painted with small, short strokes.

From the 15th April to 15th May 1874 Monet exhibited his work together with Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, Auguste Renoir, Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, and some other thirty artists. They organized their exhibition on their own as they were usually rejected at the Paris Salon. Most visitors were disgusted and even outraged over such a “graffiti”. Monet’s Impression, Sunrise “enjoyed” the most attention and some visitors even claimed that they were absolutely unable to recognize what was shown at all.

Actually, because of the high degree of abstraction, Monet did not want to call the painting “The port of Le Havre” and, hence, just named it “Impression, Sunrise”:

I was supposed to give it a title for the catalog, and since I could not call it just “View of Le Havre,” I told them: “Call it Impression.”

Monet would have liked all of his paintings titled so.

The criticism that the paintings were nothing but some sketches meant that the visitors stayed away and the costs could not be met. Nevertheless, the term “Impressionists” became quickly popular and the participating artists started to call themselves „Exposition des Impressionistes“.

Over 100 years later, the evaluation of Monet’s work changed quite a lot and on 27 October 1985, armed robbers made their way into the opened Musée Marmottan Monet and tore Impression, Sunrise as well as eight other paintings by Monet from the walls. They were recovered only five years later.

All of the 33 paintings show Rouen Cathedral. In 30 of them Monet painted the cathedral’s front; three paintings show small sections of the cathedral. The Gothic facade is shown in an extreme close-up, though it is no realistic or detailed representation of the building’s architecture. The essential elements of the paintings are rather the reproduction of the buildings interaction with different shades of light and weather conditions.

Claude Monet painted the first versions of Rouen Cathedral from a direct frontal view. The spotlight moved over time more and more to the right, as Monet changed his position. Overall, there are five different perspectives from which the paintings were executed.

Claude Monet executed most paintings of the Rouen Cathedral series during 1892/1893 in Rouen but completed many of them 1894 in Giverny. Hence, most works are signed and dated with 1894. Monet decided for the motif during a trip in 1892 and immediately started to paint the Cathedral from a vacant apartment. He could not complete this first painting as he had to return urgently to Giverny. When he arrived back to Rouen, his apartment was no longer availale and he had to choose a new location.

However, Rouen Cathedral as a motif created Monet also some headaches. He had nightmares and even destroyed some canvases. In mid-April he returned to Giverny, to recover from his efforts and doubted the quality of his cathedral paintings. The year after, Monet returned to Rouen and dedicated himself again to the subject. After he finished his work in Rouen, he completed the paintings in his studio in Giverny, in February 1894.
Claude Monet hold the Rouen Cathedral paintings back for a while cathedral for some time before he reluctantly showed them to the art dealers Paul Durand-Ruel and Bernheim. Nevertheless, Monet was well aware of the artistic value artistic of the Cathedral paintings and claimed 15,000 Francs for them. Durand-Ruel found this price to be excessive and after some discussions and waiting Monet lowered his expectations to 12,000 francs.

The paintings of the Rouen Cathedral series are now in located in various museums and collections all over the world.