selected paintings - Dickinson College

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Haystacks, Giverny, n.d.
Oil on canvas, 23 1/2 x 28 1/2 in. (59.7 x 72.4 cm)
Signed: l.r.: Quincy
Exhibited: Spirit of the Past: The Paintings of Edmund Quincy, 1903-1997 (New
York: Hirschl & Adler Galleries, 2000).
Published: Zachary D. Ross, Spirit of the Past: The Paintings of Edmund Quincy,
1903-1997 exh. cat. (New York: Hirschl & Adler Galleries, 2000), 24,
38, cat. 52.
Courtesy of Hirschl & Adler Galleries, NYC
Edmund Quincy constantly traveled back and forth to Europe
throughout his career. He spent the majority of his time studying
in Paris during his early years as an artist where his style
began to develop. In the late 1920s, Quincy began to show his
paintings in group exhibitions and then in 1930, he exhibited
his paintings in his first one-man show at Galerie d’Art
Contemporian in Paris. 1 Quincy’s exhibition was widely
acclaimed and helped launch his career. 2 Quincy continued to
exhibit his American and European paintings in Paris all the
way through the 1950s. 3
Quincy’s Haystacks, Giverny depicts the popular and frequently
painted countryside of Giverny in northern France,
made famous by Monet’s series of haystack paintings completed
in the late 1880s. Despite the frequent portrayals of this site,
Quincy’s painting is a unique rendition of Giverny because it
presents the landscape the way that he wanted to see it. The
painting’s saturated color palette, warm highlights, and natural
elements, untouched by manmade structures and figures, create
a harmonious, idyllic atmosphere that celebrates the charm and
beauty of this popular location. Quincy has captured the
essence of Giverny, and he presents a scene that is unique to this
particular place as well as to his own experience of it.
Haystacks, Giverny has a texture and style that resemble the
works of Impressionists, such as those by Monet that also represent
the haystacks and landscape of Giverny. Quincy’s focus on
light and shadow, both of which contain a soft violet hue, is
reminiscent of many Impressionist depictions of light. His visible
brushwork layers colors with small paint strokes, adding dimension
to the image. These obvious layers of careful over-painting
show that Haystacks, Giverny was not completed as an “impression”
on sight, but rather the shifting light and motion in the
brushwork create a painting that compels the viewer to recall
the paintings of the Impressionist movement.
There is an obvious connection to Monet in the subject
matter of this painting. Monet also painted a series of haystacks
in Giverny in different light, weather conditions, and times of
day during the late 1880s. Like Monet, Quincy utilized an
“impressionist” palette. Various shades of violet dominate the
shadows in both Monet’s and Quincy’s works. Rough brushstrokes
reveal numerous different colors in every centimeter of
the paintings. However, Quincy’s haystacks differ from Monet’s
in their compositional layout. Monet’s haystacks were depicted
50
with very little detail in the background. Quincy incorporates
the haystacks as an aspect of his landscape in the composition,
along with the changing colors of the grass, the verticality of the
trees, and the curvilinear shapes of the hills.
Quincy did not include humans or architecture in
Haystacks, Giverny and therefore, it is his purest landscape.
Quincy captured the vast landscape of agriculture within the
scene where the rolling hills and the patterned fields enhance
the environment. Natural color and design evoke an unrefined
atmosphere of crisp agriculture. The essence of nature is represented
in the simplicity and elegance of the landscape. Small,
quaint haystacks draw the viewer into the foreground, which
then lead him or her over the rolling hills and into the background.
The complexity and structure of architecture and people
are not needed within this landscape; the simple pattern of
nature is enough to evoke a viewer’s interest.
The range of tonality in most of Quincy’s works, and
specifically in Haystacks, Giverny and The Garden Wall, illustrates
both depth and perspective. The loose application of paint
in these works creates the visual effect of luminosity in the leaves
of the trees and ground. Quincy also used light to create depth
in both paintings, which is important to the sense of movement
in both. These landscapes have manmade elements, which are
distinguished from the fluidity of their natural surroundings.
While the manmade elements are fixed in Quincy’s The Garden
Wall, the manmade elements in Haystacks, Giverny are suggested
only by the baling of the haystacks.
Quincy created an atmosphere in this painting that surrounds
the spectator. Instead of focusing on a single haystack,
Quincy depicted not only the haystacks themselves, but also the
environment around them. Therefore, the trees and fields
around the haystacks provide a location with which the viewer
can relate to the haystacks. The viewer is placed within the environment
at the bottom of the hill, taking the place of Quincy as
he made the painting. This placement allows for the spectator
to be located where a haystack may have been standing. The
spectator is therefore able to perceive the essence of the location
and take the place of the painter within the composition.
Quincy was able to portray a particular moment in time in
his painting. He conveys the time of day (most likely afternoon),
through the intensity of the light and the long, dark
shadows cast by the haystacks. He also shows the season in
which the scene takes place since hay is gathered at a certain
time of year, after the flush of the farming season. More subtly,
Quincy created a sense of movement in his painting. The clouds
look as if they are rolling through the sky, being pushed by the
wind—a wind that is perhaps blowing with the change of seasons
and suggesting that this scene is only temporary. Haystacks,
Giverny epitomizes Quincy’s unique vision, and that of the
viewer, in depicting the temporality and character of his subject.