Description
The monumental stacks that Claude Monet depicted in his series Stacks of Wheat rose fifteen to twenty feet and stood just outside the artist’s farmhouse at Giverny. Through 1890 and 1891, he worked on this series both in the field, painting simultaneously at several easels, and in the studio, refining pictorial harmonies. In May 1891, Monet hung fifteen of these canvases next to each other in one small room in the Galerie Durand-Ruel in Paris. An unprecedented critical and financial success, the exhibition marked a breakthrough in Monet’s career, as well as in the history of French art. In this view, and in nearly all of the autumn views in the series, the conical tops of the stacks break the horizon and push into the sky. But in most of the winter views, which constitute the core of the series, the stacks seem wrapped by bands of hill and field, as if bedded down for the season. For Monet, the stack was a resonant symbol of sustenance and survival. He followed this group with further series depicting poplars, the facade of Rouen Cathedral, and, later, his own garden at Giverny. The Art Institute has the largest group of Monet’s Stacks of Wheat in the world.
Provenance
The artist (d. 1926); sold to Durand-Ruel, Paris, May 9, 1891, for 3,000 francs [this and the following per Durand-Ruel, Paris, stock book for 1891–1901 (no. 938, as Meules, fin de l’été), as confirmed by Paul-Louis Durand-Ruel and Flavie Durand-Ruel, Durand-Ruel Archives, to the Art Institute of Chicago, Feb. 5, 2013, curatorial object file]; sold to Charles Fairchild, Boston, June 26, 1891, for 5,000 francs; returned to Durand-Ruel, Paris, Aug. 4, 1891, in exchange for Monet’s Sur la falaise à Pourville, 1882 [per Durand-Ruel, Paris, Brouillard for 1888–91 (as Meules, fin de l’été): “Sold on 26 June 1891 to Ch. Fairchilds [sic], 191 Commonwealth Av. Boston, for 5 000 F. Exchanged for another Monet (Wildenstein 755) on 4 August 1891,” as confirmed by Paul-Louis Durand-Ruel and Flavie Durand-Ruel, Durand-Ruel Archives, to the Art Institute of Chicago, Feb. 5, 2013, curatorial object file. Fairchild exchanged the painting now in the Art Institute’s collection for Sur la falaise à Pourville (1882) now in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, see Wildenstein 1996]; sold to Potter Palmer (d. 1902), Chicago, Aug. 4, 1891, for 6,000 francs [per Durand-Ruel, Paris, stock book for 1888–1901 and Brouillard 1888–91 (no. 938, as Meules, fin de l’été), as confirmed by Paul-Louis Durand-Ruel and Flavie Durand-Ruel, Durand-Ruel Archives, to the Art Institute of Chicago, Feb. 5, 2013, curatorial object file]; by descent to the Palmer Family; by descent to Arthur M. Wood and Pauline Palmer Wood (d. 1984), Lake Forest, Illinois; given to the Art Institute of Chicago, beginning in 1985 [The painting was given to the Art Institute of Chicago in undivided fractional interests beginning in 1985. The Art Institute received the final fractional interest for one hundred percent ownership in 2007].
