Location📍 Art Institute of Chicago → Gallery 243

Stacks of Wheat (End of Summer)

Painted between 1890 and 1891, Stacks of Wheat (End of Summer) depicts the fifteen-to-twenty-foot monumental stacks located just outside Claude Monet’s farmhouse in Giverny. During this period, Monet worked on this series both in the field, painting simultaneously at several easels, and in the studio to refine pictorial harmonies. In this view, the conical tops of the stacks break the horizon and push into the sky. In May 1891, Monet exhibited fifteen of these canvases at the Galerie Durand-Ruel in Paris, achieving unprecedented critical and financial success. For Monet, the stack was a resonant symbol of sustenance and survival. This work is part of the Art Institute of Chicago’s extensive collection, which holds the largest group of Monet’s Stacks of Wheat in the world.