The Houses of Parliament, Sunset

1903

Oil on canvas, 81.3 × 92.5 cm. National Gallery of Art, Washington

Parliament's towers in London at sunset, repeated in the Thames below. It is one of Monet's London views, reworked for years and shown in Paris in 1904.

The towers are a blue silhouette in a haze of pink, peach and lavender. Monet paints the air as color, the light and atmosphere Impressionists aimed to capture.
Between 1899 and 1901 Monet made close to one hundred pictures of the Thames.
He developed the London canvases together at Giverny and signed this one in 1903.
Look at the upright strokes that build the towers and the short horizontal strokes of the water.
Chester Dale bought it in 1929 and left it to the National Gallery in 1963.

Monet painted Parliament from St Thomas' Hospital, across the Thames. The Met owns a companion picture of the same view in fog.

Image: National Gallery of Art Open Access · CC0