Champ De Blé 1881

Claude Monet created this painting of a wheat field, sometime in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. It is a work rooted in the soil of France, but also in a particular moment in the history of French painting. Monet and other Impressionist artists like Renoir and Degas were committed to painting modern life, and to do so, they focused on the fleeting effects of light and atmosphere on the visible world. Here, Monet has captured the warmth of the sun on the ripening wheat, and the cool shadows cast by the trees in the background. But the painting is also a product of the art market. Monet was one of the first artists to be represented by a dealer, and he created works like this one to appeal to the tastes of wealthy collectors, whose patronage helped to shape modern art, and made it distinctively bourgeois. To know more, look into exhibition catalogues and dealer's records to trace the journey of such works from studio to the collector's home.