Claude Monet, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
by Claude Monet, 1890
Sotheby's / New York
May 14, 2019
Private Collection
Private Collector
French painter Claude Monet painted this Meules (Haystacks) in 1890 as part of a 25-painting series exploring how light transforms the same subject across different times of day and seasons. This canvas captures grain stacks at sunset near his home in Giverny, their forms ablaze in reds, oranges, and vibrant greens as diagonal beams of light rake across the French countryside.
The Haystacks series marked a turning point in Monet's career and Impressionism itself. By painting the same subject repeatedly, Monet pioneered the concept of series painting, showing how fleeting atmospheric effects could be the true subject of art. He worked outdoors to capture immediate impressions, then refined his canvases in the studio using layered pigments.
Chicago collector Bertha Honoré Palmer acquired this canvas from dealer Paul Durand-Ruel in 1892, just one year after Monet's Paris exhibition. It remained in her family until 1986, when it sold for $2.53 million. At Sotheby's in 2019, it brought $110.7 million, setting the record for any Impressionist work.
Other masterpieces from the Impressionism movement

Edgar Degas, 1867
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Edgar Degas, 1890
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1881
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago

Edgar Degas, 1878
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

James McNeill Whistler, 1871
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1881
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1881
The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

Édouard Manet, 1863
Musée d'Orsay, Paris
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