Haystacks. Rouen Cathedral. Poplars. Water Lilies pond.
When you look at Claude Monet's works, you'll notice the same subjects appearing repeatedly.
And it's not just two or three paintings.
He painted about 30 Haystacks, over 30 Rouen Cathedrals, and nearly 250 Water Lilies throughout his life.
Why did he continue to paint the same subjects so extensively?
One might wonder if he never got tired of it.
When you learn the reason, your perception of Monet's paintings will change.
What he was trying to paint was neither haystacks nor cathedrals.
What He Painted Was Not Objects
From 1892 to 1894, Monet stayed in Rouen, a city in northern France, and repeatedly painted the facade of the cathedral.
He rented a room across from the cathedral and day after day, painted the same facade visible from his window.
When you line up the finished paintings, something remarkable happens.
Even though it's supposed to be the exact same building, the colors are completely different in each painting.
In one painting, bathed in the morning sun, it's a bluish-white; in another, bathed in the evening sun, it's a fiery orange; and in yet another, it's submerged in mist, appearing gray.
The gray stone building appears lavender, green, or even pink.
What Monet was painting was not the cathedral itself.
It was the light that fell upon its surface, changing moment by moment.
He often said:
"Nature never stands still."
Even when standing in the same spot and looking at the same thing, if the angle of the sun changes, if clouds drift by, or if the season shifts, the colors seen by the eye become entirely different.
That very transience was Monet's subject.
That's why one painting was not enough.
Only by arranging many paintings together could he depict the very passage of time as light changed.
The Haystacks series is the same.
An ordinary haystack near his home in Giverny.
Something no one would think to make a subject for a painting, Monet repeatedly painted in the morning, at noon, at dusk, and on snowy days.
The main subject was not the haystack, but the light and atmosphere illuminating it.
Many Canvases, Simultaneously
This method of painting was actually quite arduous.
Light doesn't wait.
Even if he tried to capture the light of a specific moment, the sun would move and the colors would change while he was painting.
So, the method Monet adopted was to set up multiple canvases simultaneously. Each time the light conditions changed, he would switch to the canvas corresponding to those conditions.
A painting for the morning light, one for noon, one for a cloudy day.
Many paintings progressed little by little, simultaneously.
And each of these paintings proved more difficult than expected.
While working on the Rouen series, Monet often fell into despair.
Struggling with his inability to paint as he wished, he nevertheless continued to return to the site.
In 1895, he selected 20 of these works and exhibited them together in a dealer's gallery.
This was to present them as a group, not as individual paintings.
The arranged cathedrals, though the same building, changed their appearance moment by moment due to the light.
The immovable stone and the constantly moving light.
