Haystacks at Sunset, Frosty Weather

Haystacks at Sunset, Frosty Weather is a painting by Claude Monet, signed at lower right and dated 1891 in the catalogue. It shows a single stack of wheat in the field beside his house at Giverny, at sunset on a day of hard frost. The canvas measures 65 by 92 centimeters. Wildenstein lists it as number 1282, and it is in a private collection; it passed through the hands of Monet's dealer Durand-Ruel.

What you're looking at

The stack stands left of center, a broad, rounded cone of brick red and rust, its top merging with a dark band of distant trees. It is backlit, but less dramatically than in the summer sunsets: its edges are soft, its body warm and dim.

The sky occupies the top quarter of the canvas. Above the horizon a band of pale yellow and gold glows where the sun has just gone down, rising into pink and salmon strokes that fill the upper corners. Below the horizon, the dark tree line is a strip of olive and green.

The middle of the canvas is a wide band of blue-violet, the far field and the hillside in shadow, painted in rough, vertical strokes. At right, a long, low farm building in rust-orange catches the last light.

The foreground is the frost. Monet paints it in pink, lilac, pale gold and white, in short horizontal strokes that seem to glitter. A broad pink sheen spreads to the right of the stack, the reflection of the sunset sky on the frozen ground, while the shadow side at left is cooler, in blue and violet.

Sunset and frost: what makes this version distinct

Frost was one of the effects Monet most wanted from the winter of 1890–91, and he caught it in several canvases. This one combines it with sunset, the two warmest and coldest things in the series at once. The result is a picture dominated by pink: the frost takes on the color of the sky, and the whole field glows. Compare the hot oranges and blues of La Meule, another backlit stack at sunset, or the snowy version in Chicago, Stacks of Wheat (Sunset, Snow Effect), where snow rather than frost holds the color. The Edinburgh Haystacks, Snow Effect sets dark stacks against a glaring winter sky instead.

The placement of the stack at left, with the farm building balancing it at right, is also unusual. It opens the right half of the picture to the frosty field and its pink reflection, which becomes a second subject.

How it was painted

Monet worked on the stacks outdoors in all weathers that winter, keeping several canvases going and turning to each one only when its light returned. Sunset effects lasted minutes, so these canvases were built up over many sessions and completed in the studio. The surface here is thick and dry, with strokes laid in different directions for each zone: vertical in the shadowed hillside, horizontal in the frost, curved on the stack.

Ownership

Public records place the canvas with Durand-Ruel, Monet's main dealer, who handled most of the series after the May 1891 exhibition. It is now in a private collection, and its later history is not well documented in public sources.

Where to see it

The painting is not on public view. For museum versions, see our Haystacks series hub and Where to See Monet. The field is described in Giverny, and the artist in Claude Monet.