claude monet haystacks in late summer
The French impressionist Claude Monet was intrigued by the nature of colour. According to Monet the colour of an object has no intrinsic quality but is dependent on the working of light on the object. During painting en plein air he discovered that the colour of an haystack changed in the course of the day. He painted series of haystacks under different (light) circumstances. In the morning, midday and in the afternoon. He used this approach also for other subjects (houses of parliament in London, cathedral of Rouen and waterlilies) and made several paintings of these subjects under different (light) circumstances.
I started painting my haystacks (below left) in the morning with a cloudy sky and hardly sunshine. I experienced that the worn and greying top layer of hay of the haystacks absorbs much light in darker en moisty circumstances. But under dry and sunny circumstances the lower layers of dry yellow hay shine through the darker top layer and change the overall colour of the haystack. After an hour or so the weather became sunny and soon I was surpassed by the light. Monet would have taken a new panel to set up a new painting with different coulours.