Waterloo Bridge, London, at Sunset

Haystacks (End of Summer), painted in 1891, belongs to Monet famous Haystacks series - the group of 25 canvases that established serial painting as a major method in modern art. The haystacks, standing in a harvested field near Giverny, are depicted in the warm afternoon light of late summer, their conical forms casting long shadows across the stubble. The Haystacks series was Monet first systematic investigation of a single motif under different conditions of light, weather, and season. Working from the late summer of 1890 through the spring of 1891, Monet painted the same two haystacks at different times of day and in different atmospheric conditions, producing a composite portrait of the motif relationship to its environment that no single image could achieve. The series most revolutionary feature is its treatment of color. Monet discovered that the same haystack could appear in completely different colors depending on the quality of light: pink and blue at dawn, gold and green at midday, violet and orange at sunset. This discovery - that color is not a property of objects but of the light that illuminates them - was the philosophical foundation of Impressionism, and the Haystacks series was its fullest demonstration.

Monet Haystacks series established serial painting as a major method in modern art and demonstrated that the same subject, seen under different conditions, reveals truths about perception that no single image can contain. Its influence on Cezanne, the Cubists, and every subsequent artist who used seriality as a means of investigation was decisive.

This painting captures the Haystacks series essential insight: that a haystack is not a fixed object but a living process, and that the painter who observes it over time sees not one haystack but many - a haystack of morning frost, a haystack of midday heat, a haystack of evening gold.