CLAUDE MONET WAS one of the most prolific and renowned french impressionist painters of the 19th and 20th centuries, whose works were mainly composed of various natural landscapes in france.
impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that focused primarily on portraying natural light in paintings. rather than creating imaginary and seemingly perfect natural landscapes in a studio, impressionists wanted to capture what they could see ‘en plein air’ as accurately as possible (they tended to paint outdoors). this led to impressionism being best known for featuring visible, rapid unblended strokes of paint. artists had to work fast since light is constantly changing throughout the day. as a result, not a lot of attention was paid to making images look hyper realistic, but more so towards using colour to convey light.
the ‘haystacks’ series — ‘les meules à giverny’ or ‘the stacks at giverny’ in french — was a series of about 30 paintings composed over the course of almost a year (from the summer of 1890 to 1891). ‘haystacks’ shows us the same subject in various weathers and seasons, during different times of the day.
capturing the first impression was crucial to monet. he’d paint what he could as quickly as he could when there was a particular scene he wished to capture, and then he’d finish and touch up his work in his studio, without taking away the original essence of the painting he’d worked on. it proved difficult for him, however, during the winter months. he was quoted sending a message to critic geoffroy:
‘i am working very hard, struggling with a series of different effects (haystacks) but at this season, the sun sets so fast i cannot follow it… the more i continue, the more i see that a great deal of work is necessary in order to succeed in rendering what i seek.’
what was it that monet sought? what did he want to achieve with ‘haystacks’? what was it that fuelled a search so ‘necessary’ that it left him with dozens of paint-filled canvases and one of the most famous series in impressionist art?
maybe he had no idea either. maybe he just painted because he was compelled to. because it’s what felt right to him.
what interests me, however, is how he took what seemed such a mundane and uninteresting subject and managed to create something so beautiful and so versatile. not one painting in this series looks the same. and although this might have not been what he intended, i feel like ‘haystacks’ shows us how everything is multidimensional. how a mere change in lighting, a slight shift in perspective can give us a completely different picture to what we saw previously. that everything is so stunning and so complex, such that viewing them only one-dimensionally would be unjust.
things require looking at from many different perspectives, at different times, during different seasons… and maybe you’ll realise you never be fully able to understand them at all. and maybe they were never meant to be understood in the first place.
monet chased the sun, and i don’t know whether he found what he was looking for. but maybe her rays shone light on the answer, and he had unknowingly painted it all along.
