OIL PAINTING: Grainstacks at Giverny, Morning Effect, 1888
Monet's painting during this period slowly gravitated toward a broader, more expansive and expressive style. In Grainstacks at Giverny, Morning Effect (1888) the entire surface vibrates electrically with shimmering light and color. Paradoxically, as his style matured and as Monet continued to develop the sensitivity of his vision, the strictly illusionistic aspect of his paintings began to disappear. Plastic form dissolved into colored pigment, and three-dimensional space evaporated into a charged, purely optical surface atmosphere. Monet's paintings , although invariably inspired by the visible world, increasingly declared themselves as objects which are, above all, paintings.