How Paintings Depict Time

Various ways that artists have represented the passage of time

Left: Haystack, Sun in the Mist (1891) by Claude Monet. Image source Wikimedia Commons. Right: Haystack, Morning Snow Effect (1891) by Claude Monet. Image source Wikimedia Commons

Paint is usually thought to be a static medium, capable of depicting only frozen instants of time. Yet with a little inventiveness, it’s possible for paint to represent the passage of time too.

The French Impressionist painter Claude Monet developed a practice of painting in series…