Image: public domain, courtesy of Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington

The Houses of Parliament, Sunset

Claude Monet, 1903

Monet painted London's Parliament from a balcony of St Thomas' Hospital, right across the River Thames. He worked on these views over three winters, then kept finishing them in his studio in France.

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Did you know?

Look for a small olive-green streak near the centre: it is a person in a boat on the river.
Monet painted about nineteen views of Parliament, all from the same viewpoint across the Thames.
What fascinated Monet most about London was its fog, which turned the buildings into blue shadows.
To finish the pictures back in France, Monet asked for photographs of Parliament to be sent from London.
It was first shown in Paris in 1904, in Monet's exhibition Views of the Thames in London.
A Paris collector bought it that same year; later the American Chester Dale left it to the National Gallery in 1963.

About the artist

Claude Monet (1840–1926) was born in Paris, grew up by the sea in Le Havre, and from 1883 lived and painted at Giverny in Normandy.

He was the guiding spirit of Impressionism, which took its name from his painting Impression, Sunrise, and he is beloved for his haystacks, cathedrals and water lilies.

As a teenager he earned pocket money drawing funny caricatures of local people, and later he lovingly tended a garden with a Japanese bridge that he painted again and again.

Claude Monet ›

Where it is today: Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington · Museum page