Claude Monet: Stacks of Wheat, 1890–91 – Porcelain Art Mug

In the autumn of 1890 Monet set up his easel in the field just outside his farmhouse at Giverny and began painting the stacks of wheat standing there — conical ricks four to six metres high, built to hold the harvest until threshing. He worked on several canvases at once, moving from one to the next as the light moved, and kept it up through the winter. Twenty-five canvases came out of it.

The subject was never the stacks. It was the half-hour: sunset in snow, the shadows gone blue and the stubble gone violet, the stack itself a dark mass with a burning edge. Monet called what he was chasing enveloppe — the air and light lying between the eye and the thing.

In May 1891 he hung fifteen of the series side by side in one small room at the Galerie Durand-Ruel in Paris. It was a critical and financial success without precedent in his career, and it changed how his work was understood. The poplars, Rouen Cathedral and the water lilies all followed from it.

Claude Monet, Stacks of Wheat (Sunset, Snow Effect), 1890–91. Oil on canvas, 65.3 × 100.4 cm. The Art Institute of Chicago, Potter Palmer Collection, 1922.431. Public domain; the museum’s reproduction is released under CC0.

Fine Porcelain — 10 oz. Dishwasher and microwave safe.

Selected by Dr. Walther Fuchs for the Tazzarte collection.