Why Claude Monet's Meules à Giverny is an Impressionist Masterpiece | Sotheby's

In 1893, at the height of the hay-making season, Claude Monet set up his easel in the meadow just to the south of the site of his future water-lily pond and painted Meules à Giverny. Infused with light, shadow, color and movement, this oil exemplifies the best of Monet’s bucolic Impressionism, taking as its subject one of the artist’s most beloved—that of the haystack.

Monet found his inspiration in the fields adjacent to his home in Giverny; taking the principal imagery of the monolithic grainstacks which dominate the harvested fields from the high spring onward. Commonly known as his Haystacks, these canvases are anchored by gigantic conical structures, composed of wheat or grain, stacked in such a way as to allow the stalks to dry and prevent mold prior to the grain’s separation from the stalk by a threshing machine. Each village did not possess its own thresher, and the wait for one of these traveling machines to reach a specific location often took months—grain cut in the summer might sit in its neat and careful stack until January or February of the following year. These stacks were over ten feet in height, sometimes reaching over twenty feet, their shape varying by region.

Meules à Giverny will be part of Sotheby’s Modern Evening Auction, presented in partnership with Celine, which takes place on 15 May 2024.

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