Image: public domain, courtesy of The Art Institute of Chicago

Stacks of Wheat (End of Summer)

Claude Monet, 1890–91

These big stacks of harvested wheat stood in a field just outside Monet's house in Giverny. He painted the same stacks again and again, to catch how they changed with the light, the weather and the seasons.

🧩 Build this painting as a puzzle

🏛 Enter the 3D museum

🎧 Audio guide available in the 3D museum

Did you know?

The main series has 25 paintings of these stacks, made in 1890 and 1891.
Monet worked on several canvases at once, switching to another one as the light changed.
In May 1891 he showed 15 of the stack paintings together at the Durand-Ruel gallery in Paris, and the show was a huge success.
After the stacks, Monet went on to paint other series, such as poplar trees and Rouen Cathedral.
Potter and Bertha Palmer of Chicago bought Monet's stack paintings in 1891, this one included, and it later came to the Art Institute from their family.
In 2019 another painting from this series sold at auction for 110.7 million dollars, a record for Monet.

About the artist

Claude Monet (1840–1926) was born in Paris, grew up by the sea in Le Havre, and from 1883 lived and painted at Giverny in Normandy.

He was the guiding spirit of Impressionism, which took its name from his painting Impression, Sunrise, and he is beloved for his haystacks, cathedrals and water lilies.

As a teenager he earned pocket money drawing funny caricatures of local people, and later he lovingly tended a garden with a Japanese bridge that he painted again and again.

Claude Monet ›

Where it is today: The Art Institute of Chicago · Museum page