“When I began . . . I believed that two canvases would suffice, one for gray weather and one for sun. At that time I was painting some haystacks that had excited me and that made a magnificent group, just two steps from here. One day, I saw that my lighting had changed. I said to my stepdaughter: ‘Go to the house, if you don’t mind, and bring me another canvas!’ She brought it to me, but a short time afterward it was different again. ‘Another! Still another!’ And I worked on each one only when I had my effect, that’s all.”

—Claude Monet, on his haystack series, as quoted in Monet by William C. Seitz, 1960.