Houses of Parliament London Sun Breaking Through the Fog

Houses of Parliament London Sun Breaking Through the Fog: Claude Monet

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Art Type: Oil Painting
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Claude Monet Oil Painting - Houses of Parliament London Sun Breaking Through the Fog

Keywords: Houses, Parliament, London, Sun, Breaking, Fog

Work Overview: Houses of Parliament, London, Sun Breaking Through the Fog
Claude Monet
Date: 1904
Style: Impressionism
Genre: cityscape

Claude Monet painted a series of oil paintings of the Palace of Westminster, home of the British Parliament, in the fall of 1899 and the early months of 1900 and 1901 during stays in London.[1] All of the series' paintings share the same viewpoint from Monet's window or a terrace at St Thomas' Hospital overlooking the Thames and the approximate canvas size of 81 cm × 92 cm (32 in × 36 3/8 in).[2][3] They are, however, painted during different times of the day and weather circumstances.

By the time of the Houses of Parliament series, Monet had abandoned his earlier practice of completing a painting on the spot in front of the motif. He carried on refining the images back in France, and sent to London for photographs to help in this. This caused some adverse reaction, but Monet's reply was that his means of creating a work was his own business, and it was up to the viewer to judge the final result.

Of Monet's and Pissarro's experience of England during the Franco-German war, Pissarro was later to write, `Monet and I were very enthusiastic over the London landscapes'. However, they chose different aspects of it: Pissarro, what he described as `at that time a charming suburb' (Lower Norwood) and Monet, Hyde Park and Westminster. Monet's paintings of Hyde Park in 1871, though nothing more than stretches of grass and pathways with an indication of strolling figures are remarkably true to character though the principal product of his stay in London was the beautiful view of Westminster Bridge and the Houses of Parliament, dated 1871.

The suggestion of color in the fog-laden sky is certainly Impressionist but the silhouette of the Parliament buildings does not suggest any debt to Turner, whose works the two French artists now saw. Monet observed and made use of the same flattening result of the heavy atmosphere as Whistler, whose Nocturnes belong to the same decade.

The resemblance, fortuitous as it may be, is increased rather than otherwise by the evidently well-considered relation of the foreground timber pier and the buildings and bridge behind, a reminder that Monet like Whistler was an admirer of the Japanese prints in which these decorative relationships had a studied importance. Monet was to come nearer to Turner in the later more vividly chromatic paintings of the Thames at Westminster made on his later visits in the first decade of the twentieth century.

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Houses of Parliament London Sun Breaking Through the Fog

Claude Monet

Work Overview