Stack of Wheat (Thaw, Sunset)

Stack of Wheat (Thaw, Sunset) is one of the winter canvases of Claude Monet's Haystacks series, painted at Giverny in 1890–91 and signed and dated Claude Monet 91 at lower left. A single stack stands in a field where snow is melting, its body glowing deep red and plum in the last light, while the sun sets behind the hills in a thin band of gold and orange and the wet ground reflects pink, lilac and blue. Durand-Ruel's stock book recorded it as Meules, le dégel, soleil couchant (stacks, thaw, sunset). It is one of six Haystacks in the Art Institute of Chicago, the gift of Mr. and Mrs. Daniel C. Searle in 1983.

What you are looking at

The canvas is 64.4 by 92.5 cm. The stack sits just left of center, a rounded cone on a slightly wider base, painted in dense, layered strokes of crimson, rust, violet and brown. Its top barely touches the line of hills behind it, and its outline is softened by a faint halo of orange, where the low sun catches its edge from behind.

Behind, a long, low ridge of hills runs across the picture in plum, violet and dull green, with a darker strip of trees and houses at its foot on the right. Above it the sky is pale lilac and gray, except for a narrow, brilliant band of yellow and orange along the horizon, the last of the sun. The foreground is the thaw: patches of melting snow in white, blue and lavender, mixed with pink and orange reflections and bare earth, painted in broken horizontal touches. The stack's shadow, a violet smear, reaches toward the right.

Where and when it was painted

Monet began the Haystacks series near the end of summer 1890 in a field beside his house at Giverny and carried it on through the winter into the spring of 1891. As the Art Institute explains, he worked both in the field, at several easels at once, and in the studio, refining the color harmonies. In May 1891 he hung fifteen of the canvases side by side in one room at Durand-Ruel's gallery in Paris, an unprecedented success that changed his career. See our Giverny hub for the setting.

How it was painted

The picture is a study in close, warm harmonies. Monet painted the stack and hills with many thin layers, so that their color seems to glow from within rather than sit on the surface. In the foreground, he used the opposite technique: separate, crisp touches of blue, white and pink that read as wet, reflective snow. The thin gold horizon is the only hot, bright color, and it gives the whole canvas its sense of a sun just disappearing. As the museum notes, in most of the winter views the stacks seem wrapped by bands of hill and field, as if bedded down for the season, and this one is a clear example.

Ownership

According to the Art Institute, the painting was probably sold by Monet in September 1891 to the Paris branch of the New York dealer Knoedler, and was auctioned in New York in April 1893, when Durand-Ruel and Boussod, Valadon et Cie bought it in half shares. It later belonged to the dealer Stephen Hahn before Daniel and Dora Searle, Chicago collectors, gave it to the museum in 1983.

How this version differs

The Art Institute holds the largest group of Monet's stacks anywhere, and comparing them is the best way to understand the series. This sunset in thaw is colder and more muted than Stacks of Wheat (End of Day, Autumn), warmer than the snow-covered views, and simpler than the double-stack End of Summer. Outside Chicago, compare the MFA's Grainstack (Sunset) and the backlit Meules at the Museum Barberini.

Where to see it

The painting (1983.166) is on view in the Art Institute of Chicago's Impressionist galleries, usually with other stacks from the series. See our Monet at the Art Institute of Chicago guide and where to see Monet's paintings.