The Art Institute of Chicago Monet's Haystacks Reconsidered Author(s): Richard R. Brettell Source: Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Autumn, 1984), pp. 4-21 Published by: The Art Institute of Chicago Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4115885 . Accessed: 06/02/2014 16:51 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The Art Institute of Chicago is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 198.40.29.65 on Thu, 6 Feb 2014 16:51:55 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Monet's Haystacks Reconsidered RICHARD R. BRETTELL Searle Curator,European Painting and Sculpture O N May 4, 1891, an exhibitionof 22 recent paintings by Claude Monet opened at the Galerie Durand-Ruel in Paris. In one small room, 15 paintings of the same subject were hung together. The "Series of Grainstacks (1890-91)," as they were called in the catalogue,1 was conceived at a decisive moment not only in Monet's own career but also in the history of French painting. Monet, at the age of 51, clearly was the dean of French painters. By the time his exhibition of Haystacks opened, he had already outlived two of his greatest younger colleagues: Vincent van Gogh com- mitted suicide in the previous summer and Georges Seurat died in March, while working on his last master- piece, The Circus. The two other major masters of the younger generation were not in Paris: Paul Gauguin had fled France for Tahiti and was not to reappear in the world's artistic capital until 1893, and Paul Cezanne was living in what amounted to life-long aesthetic exile in Provence. The remaining younger artists, with the ex- ception of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, were working under the spell of one or the other of these four Post- Impressionists; the original Impressionist movement definitely had lost its avant-garde vitality. Monet himself essentially had abandoned the Impres- sionists before the group's last exhibition, held in the spring of 1886, and refused to participate in that event. PLATE1 ClaudeMonet (French,1840-1926), Haystack,Thaw, Sunset, 1891.The Art Instituteof Chicago (see figure12). 5 This content downloaded from 198.40.29.65 on Thu, 6 Feb 2014 16:51:55 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO Aluseuns//m Studiesai/" This content downloaded from 198.40.29.65 on Thu, 6 Feb 2014 16:51:55 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 140, A44 ~ 1$ IPOO,- 14I Pt'~ This content downloaded from 198.40.29.65 on Thu, 6 Feb 2014 16:51:55 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions At the time, he was struggling toward an aesthetic inde- group of three-Haystacks, Setting Sun (pl. 3, fig. 13), pendence that was to culminate in the great exhibition he Two Haystacks (pl. 4), and Haystack, Winter, Giverny shared with sculptor Auguste Rodin at the Galerie (pl. 5, fig. 9). The decision to acquire both these can- Georges Petit in connection with the International Ex- vases-Haystack (pl. 2, fig. 11) and Haystack, Thaw, position of 1889. After 1886, his Impressionist col- Sunset (pl. 1, fig. 12)-was complicated by the fact that leagues had scattered. Camille Pissarro remained in the museum already possessed 32 paintings by Monet. Eragny, where he adopted the Divisionist style of However, our recognition of the importance of the idea Seurat; Alfred Sisley worked in the quaint river town of of series for Monet and of the seminal nature of the Moret-sur-Loing, evolving a style that harked back to Haystack images provided the necessary impetus for the early Impressionism; Auguste Renoir became involved purchase. With five Haystacks in its collection, the Art in classically inspired figure painting; and Edgar Degas Institute has become the place where one can begin to turned into a sort of urban recluse, working increasingly understand Monet's intentions in doing the series. inwardly as his eye problems worsened. In some ways, When hung together on a single wall, the five paint- Monet was the only one who looked confidently for- ings from the series "breathe contentedly," as Pissarro ward; with the exhibition of his Haystacks at Durand- said of the original grouping in 1891.5Interestingly, there Ruel in 1891, he secured his preeminent position. is no particular sequence in which the paintings look The Haystacks series proved to be a critical and finan- best; virtually any combination of the five on a single cial success that far exceeded the dreams of its painter or wall is powerful. One can interpret the series by hanging his dealer Paul Durand-Ruel. The critics, led by Gustave the five canvases in different ways, using as the determi- Geffroy, Monet's young friend and author of the lyrical nant compositional balance, chromatic relationships, introduction to the catalogue, were almost unanimous in seasonal or diurnal time, or even something as un- their applause. Pissarro, often impatient with what he historical as their various current frames. One is considered the venal, bourgeois values of his colleague, tempted to think that Monet himself wanted maximum called the Haystacks "the work of a very great artist."2 flexibility of arrangement in the series so that no par- Yet, more extraordinary was their popularity with ticular interconnections would be paramount. Yet, such buyers. Before the end of the summer, many of the avail- temptation must be avoided until a full analysis of all the able paintings from the series had been sold and Monet paintings in the 1891 exhibition is completed. had finished several others for his dealers. In the history In fact, it is due to the way that this exhibition caught of modern art, it is hard to point to other paintings as the imagination of one Chicago collector that the Art revolutionary that have been accepted so easily by critics Institute today has five Haystack images. Bertha and collectors alike as were the Haystacks. Honore Palmer (1849-1918) saw the 1891 exhibition The reasons for this have never been fully established, and, perhaps as a result of that experience, became the perhaps because the Haystacks, like most of Monet's most important 19th-century collector of Impressionist later series of Poplars, Cathedrals, Water Lilies, and vari- landscape painting outside France as well as the first ous travel views, have been dispersed in collections collector to grasp the importance of Monet's series paint- throughout the world and never have been reunited. In ings. Twenty-eight of the Art Institute's great collection Monet exhibitions of significance held in Chicago, of Impressionist paintings-including three of the mu- New York/St. Louis, and Paris,3 only a small number of seum's five Haystacks (pls. 1-2, 4)-once were owned Haystacks were brought together to suggest the majesty by Mrs. Palmer. It is the purpose of this article to exam- of the original ensemble. The superb group of eight ine carefully the exhibition of Haystacks in 1891, deduc- Haystacks in the current exhibition "A Day in the ing from it Monet's intentions; to reveal more about the Country: Impressionism and the French Landscape" is series by showing how his most important and percep- the largest to be assembled since 1891.4 Until recently, tive American patron responded to it; and to discuss the only three versions of the Haystacks could be seen at one ways in which her perception of the series continues to time in a public collection-that of The Art Institute of influence our view of it today. Chicago. Thus, Monet's original intention to create a Unfortunately, it is difficult, indeed impossible, to series of 15 specific paintings that achieved a larger har- identify with certainty all the Haystack paintings in the mony than was possible in a smaller number existed 1891 exhibition. Monet himself chose the 15 composi- more in the minds of scholars and critics than it did in tions from a larger number of Haystacks, 30 of which any actual location. survive today.6 Of the fifteen pictures selected, eight had Fortunately, The Art Institute of Chicago recently been purchased from the painter by Durand-Ruel, two had the opportunity to purchase two additional paint- were in private collections, and the remaining five evi- ings from the Haystack series to add to its distinguished dently were part of Monet's own stock, although they 6 This content downloaded from 198.40.29.65 on Thu, 6 Feb 2014 16:51:55 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Monet's Haystacks Reconsidered were not identified as such. This meager information, 10. Haystack(Sunset, Winter) together with the records kept by the Galerie Durand- W. 1282, Private Collection Ruel, makes it possible to identify at least ten of the 11. Haystack (Winter) paintings with some certainty. However, some of (?) W. 1283, The Art Instituteof Chicago Monet's titles were that could general enough they apply 12. (End of the Day) to two or three and the records of Haystack equally pictures, early (?) W.