Wheatstacks (Sunset, Snow Effect)
1890/91
Oil on canvas
65.3 x 100.4 cm
Potter Palmer Collection, 1922.43

These paintings are part of a series of fifteen canvases that Monet painted of wheatstacks at different seasons and times of day. His goal was to show how changing light—from winter to summer, from dawn to dusk—changes the way things look. What seasons are shown here? What times of day? 

French farmers made these stacks to store wheat through the winter, and they represented a farmer’s wealth. Monet’s paintings saluted the bounty of French farmlands in the late nineteenth century.