In July 1890, Claude Monet began four almost identically scaled canvases showing poppy fields near his home in Giverny. Although he did not consider these to be a series, like the 25 paintings of stacks of wheat that he began shortly after the harvest that same summer, the works certainly show his growing interest in developing several canvases at once. They also demonstrate a far more homogeneous touch than the freely brushed landscapes of his earlier career, with surfaces that have a tapestry-like materiality.
