Stacks of Wheat (End of Summer)
1890–91
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
60 × 100.5 cm (23 5/8 × 39 9/16 in.); Framed: 75.6 × 116.6 × 7.4 cm (29 3/4 × 45 7/8 × 2 7/8 in.)
Classification
oil on canvas
Department
Painting and Sculpture of Europe
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
64818
Rights
Public Domain
Art Historical Context
Claude Monet’s *Stacks of Wheat (End of Summer)*, painted in 1890–91, captures the quiet beauty of rural France through the eyes of the leading Impressionist master. Working in oil on canvas, Monet used loose, vibrant brushstrokes to record how late-summer light bathes the golden stacks and surrounding fields. The modest dimensions—roughly 60 by 100 centimeters—invite viewers to experience the scene at an intimate scale, as if standing in the landscape itself. This work belongs to Monet’s celebrated Haystacks series, in which he returned repeatedly to the same subject at different hours and s...
About the Artist
Claude Monet · 1840–1926
Claude Monet, born Oscar-Claude Monet on November 14, 1840, in Paris and raised in Le Havre, Normandy, began his artistic journey as a successful teenage caricaturist. His formal training started at the Le Havre secondary school of the arts in 1851, where he received his first drawing lessons from Jacques-François Ochard. Around 1858, he met Eugène Boudin, who became his pivotal mentor, introducin...