Monet's Series Paintings - Stacks of Wheat

The series of paintings of stacks of wheat (or grain stacks or haystacks as they are sometimes called) are about Monet's obsession about identifying the colour of light at different times of the day.

The colour of the haystacks vary according to the time of day they were painted and how the light shone on the haystack at the time.

Most of the haystacks were located within 2 miles of his home

The colour that the haystack is perceived to be by Monet is wholly determined by which colours are absorbed by the haystack. What's left is the the colour that cannot be absorbed - and that's the colour of the haystack

Traditionally, it's been thought that the motifs in Monet's series paintings were just objects which he used to explore how light, color, and form changed over the course of the day and in different weather conditions.

However there is now a view that Monet was equally interested in the meaning and significance of the motifs themselves. Stacks of wheat are traditional symbols of rural traditions - in a time of increasing industrialisation and urbanisation. They also symbolise the land's fertility, the local farmers' material wealth, and the region's prosperity.

Because very few artists and art historians were also farmers, many of the so-called "haystacks" in western art actually depict stacks of wheat or other grain crops. For centuries before the hay-baler and combine-harvester dropped bales of similar dimensions in hayfields and wheat-fields, haymaking and harvesting created very different landscapes. In many parts of the world they still do.

Hay was cut from green grass with a scythe, laid in parallel windrows on the ground, dried and turned with hand-held or horse-drawn rakes after a few days of sunshine, raked by hand or horse-drawn sleds into "cobs" or "cocks" or head-high stacks in the field for further drying, then carted to the farmyard or barn where they were made into more durable ricks or stacks out of the weather's way.

Grain crops were cut with scythe or sickle when the plants had already turned from green to gold; the fallen plants were immediately bundled into a sheaf, tied with a few straw stalks; then six to eight sheaves were leaned against each other to form a reasonably weather-proof stook or shook, which stood in the field until the sheaves were carted off to compose larger even more rain-resistant stacks, grain-ends in, cut-stalks out, either in a barn or left out in the fields.

Hay in Art - Missed stacks and mistakes: distinguishing between hay and straw and other heaps. by Alan Ritch