Grainstacks in the Sunlight, Morning Effect

Grainstacks in the Sunlight, Morning Effect is a painting by Claude Monet of two stacks of wheat in the field beside his house at Giverny, lit by a clear morning sun. Wildenstein's catalogue raisonné lists it as number 1268 and dates it to 1890, at the start of the stacks campaign that ran into 1891. The canvas measures 65 by 100 centimeters, the standard size Monet used for many of the series, and it is in a private collection.

What you're looking at

The two stacks are placed as in several late-summer canvases: a smaller one at the left edge and a big one right of center. This time the light comes from the left and slightly in front, so the stacks are lit rather than silhouetted. Their sunny faces are painted in cream, lemon and pale gold, and the straw texture of the caps is picked out in short, separate strokes.

The bases are hotter. Along the bottom of the large stack Monet runs a band of orange and vermilion, the color of straw packed tight and catching reflected light from the field. On the shaded side, at right, the stack turns lilac and blue.

The shadows fall to the right, long but not yet at full stretch. A strip of blue-violet runs from the small stack toward the center; another trails off the right edge of the large one. Behind, a screen of trees is painted in pale blue, green and gold, a few white houses glint between them, and a soft lilac ridge of hills runs across under a sky of white and pale blue.

Morning light: what makes this version distinct

The canvas is close in layout to Grainstacks, in Bright Sunlight at Hill-Stead and to the Orsay's Haystacks, End of Summer, but the light comes from the other direction. In those pictures the sun is behind the stacks and their fronts are in shade. Here it falls across them from the side, so this is one of the brightest and most yellow pictures in the series, with the stacks almost the color of the light itself.

The time of day shows in the air. The background is not crisp; it is dissolved in a pale, bluish haze, the kind that hangs over a valley before the day warms up. The bright foreground against that soft distance gives the picture its fresh, early feeling, quite unlike the heavy warmth of Stacks of Wheat (End of Day, Autumn).

How it was painted

Monet painted the stacks in the open air, carrying several canvases into the field and changing from one to another as the light shifted, then reworked them in his studio so that each became a finished harmony. The paint here is applied thickly, with short, crisscrossing strokes in the field and longer, curved ones following the slope of the stacks.

The series and its owners

The stacks were the first motif Monet developed into a deliberate series. Fifteen canvases were shown at Durand-Ruel's gallery in Paris in May 1891, and many of the pictures quickly found buyers, a large share of them in America. Unlike most versions, this one has stayed in private hands, so it is rarely exhibited and its later ownership is not well documented in public sources. The other versions are gathered in our Haystacks series hub, and Where to See Monet lists the museums that hold them.

Details to look for

Look at the gap between the two stacks. Monet leaves a long strip of open, sunlit stubble there, and the small stack's shadow points straight at the big one, tying the pair together. Notice too how the tops of the stacks are lighter than their bases: the caps of loose straw catch the sun, while the packed drums below hold a deeper orange.

Where to see it

The painting is in a private collection and is not on public view. The place where Monet painted it is described in our page on Giverny, and his life and work in Claude Monet.