Getty Museum Buys Seminal Monet Work : Art: ‘Wheatstacks’ and works by Degas and Millet bolster collection.

In a multimillion-dollar move that adds a glittering star to the J. Paul Getty Museum’s collection and significantly bolsters its holdings of 19th-Century art, the Malibu museum has purchased a seminal work by French Impressionist Claude Monet and paintings by Edgar Degas, Jean Francois Millet and Theodore Gericault.

The purchases, which go on public view Thursday, are part of an ongoing effort to upgrade and round out the museum’s collection before it moves to the new Getty Center in Brentwood, slated to open in 1997.

The most valuable new acquisition by far is Monet’s “Wheatstacks (Snow Effect, Morning),” an 1891 painting of two haystacks in winter. As a matter of policy the Getty does not reveal purchase prices of artworks in its collection, but the Monet was sold in 1989 to an unidentified New York private collector for $8.5 million at Sotheby’s New York. The collector sold the work to the Getty in a private transaction.

The auction record for a Monet painting is $24.5 million, paid for “Dans la prairie” in 1988. Prices have dropped considerably since the height of the art market frenzy in the late 1980s, but experts say Monet’s “Haystacks”--as the series of approximately 30 paintings are popularly known--are still worth several million dollars apiece because of their rarity and importance in the artist’s aesthetic development.

Monet is regarded as the most powerful exponent of the aspect of Impressionism that is concerned with atmosphere and color. His paintings of haystacks are his first major series featuring the same subject in different seasons and light conditions.

The Getty’s “Wheatstacks”--which was painted in February, 1891, at Monet’s country home in Giverny while the artist was observing a neighbor’s farm--is the most archetypal Impressionist work to enter the Getty’s collection. This example from the “Haystacks” series is of special interest because it was immediately purchased from the artist by a dealer in Paris and has been tucked away in private collections for the past century.

The painting has only been exhibited twice--at Galerie Paul Rosenberg in Paris in 1936 and at Acquavella Galleries in New York in 1976. Similar works from the series played a large role in “A Day in the Country” exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1984, although the Getty picture was not among them.

Getty Museum Director John Walsh praised the Monet as “one of the most beautiful images of winter we’ve ever seen.” It’s a classic image that represents the fundamental achievement of the Impressionist landscape, he said, with a snowy scene that appears to be white, but is actually painted in brilliant color.

“The Monet is a signature painting in fabulous condition,” said Deborah Gribbon, the museum’s associate director and chief curator. “You expect to like it. People always like these paintings, but this one is delicious. People are going to love it.”

Walsh said that the museum has been relatively slow to build its 19th-Century collection, but the new acquisitions mark an important development.

“We are trying to add the yardsticks, the pictures that provide a measure of the period,” Walsh said. “They are scarce, but they are there. One by one, we have moved up when they come along. Now we are getting strong.”

Visitors have been coming to the Getty for the past few years to see such 19th-Century landmark works as Ensor’s “Christ’s Entry into Brussels in 1889” and Vincent van Gogh’s “Irises,” Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s “La Promenade” and Edouard Manet’s “Rue Mosnier With Flags,” Walsh said.

The new acquisitions “give a real crescendo at the end of our collection,” paintings curator David Jaffe said. The museum has previously concentrated on beefing up its holdings of artworks from earlier periods partly because they were more rare and comparatively affordable, but now that Impressionist prices have dropped from the inflated levels of the 1980s, the Getty has been able to acquire “brilliant paintings,” he said.

Unlike many of Monet’s other haystack paintings--including most of those in the major Monet retrospective exhibition currently at the Art Institute of Chicago--the Getty’s painting retains its original three-dimensional surface because it has not been re-lined by conservators, a process of adding a new backing that tends to flatten out the texture. Viewers can not only see Monet’s rough brush strokes, they can see hairs from his brush, Jaffe noted.

In addition to the Monet, the museum has acquired an early (1841) Millet portrait, “Mme. Felix-Bienaime Feuardent,” described by Walsh as “an unforgettable image” of a young woman. The Gericault, “Trio of Lovers,” is a rare, recently discovered 1817-20 painting, depicting a dramatically lit interior in which an embracing couple is observed by a reclining nude woman. The Degas is a tiny, youthful self-portrait, executed around 1857-58.

Although the museum’s 19th-Century collection still has gaps, each of the additions complements works by the same artists already owned by the Getty, Gribbon said.