Detail of Haystacks (Effect of Snow and Sun) by Monet in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, November 2008

Haystacks (Effect of Snow and Sun), 1891
Claude Monet (French, 1840–1926)
Oil on canvas
25 3/4 x 36 1/4 in. (65.4 x 92.1 cm)
Signed and dated (lower left): Claude Monet 91
H. O. Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929 (29.100.109)

Between summer 1890 and winter 1891, Monet executed about thirty paintings of the haystacks in a field near his house at Giverny. In the midst of this effort, he wrote to the critic Gustave Geoffroy: "I am working very hard, struggling with a series of different effects (haystacks), but at this season the sun sets so fast I cannot follow it. . . . The more I continue, the more I see that a great deal of work is necessary in order to succeed in rendering what I seek." Although Monet had painted multiple versions of a single subject earlier, Haystacks was the first group that he exhibited as a series; in 1891, fifteen were shown at the Galerie Durand-Ruel in Paris.

Text from: www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/29.100.109