Claude Monet - Verschneiter Getreideschober in der Sonne (1891)

 

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Claude Monet's series of grain stacks explores the seasonal transformation of the landscape and the varying effects of sunlight throughout different times of the day. Monet captured the characteristic light atmosphere of a cold winter day, depicting reflections on the snow-covered field in delicate shades of yellow and orange.

As early as the 1870s, Monet revisited places that fascinated him and captured subjects that intrigued him in variations, pairs of paintings, or sequences of works. Around 1890, he began to formalize this serial approach by creating large groups of paintings that formed a carefully coordinated whole, which he also exhibited as such. The first of these methodically interconnected series was dedicated to the unpretentious subject of grain stacks situated near his house in Giverny. By May 1891, Monet displayed 15 of these works in an exhibition at the Parisian gallery of Paul Durand-Ruel, where they were hung side by side in a room.

The repeated, almost obsessive depiction of the same subject might evoke a sense of symbolic elevation of the subject. However, the constant variations in color, shadow, and light, as well as the fact that Monet clearly represented the grain stacks in different times of day and seasons, indicate that he was hardly concerned with the subject matter itself. On the contrary, he used the surface of the grain stacks shown in close-up as a kind of projection screen or shield (French: écran), allowing him to explore the subtlest changes in atmosphere – what Monet referred to as "enveloppe," the wrapping of an object with color, air, and light. "The subject is of little importance to me; what I want to depict is what lies between me and the subject," Monet explained in an interview in 1895. Similarly, he had already expressed similar sentiments four years prior to a visitor of his exhibition at Durand-Ruel, assuring them, "For me, a landscape doesn't exist on its own, because its appearance changes every moment; it lives through what surrounds it – through the air and the light, which are constantly changing. […] For me, the subject only gains its true value through its surroundings." With this, Monet expressed the two central premises of his late Impressionist work: firstly, the ideal of subjective observation of nature – the interplay between impression and sensation – and secondly, his focus on the subtle depiction of fleeting atmospheric phenomena. Just like his later series paintings, Monet's "Snow-Covered Grain Stack in the Sun" also emerged from plein air studies of the subject, which he later meticulously reworked in his studio.