The Houses of Parliament, Sunset

The Houses of Parliament, Sunset from 1903 is among the most celebrated paintings in Monet's London series — the Palace of Westminster seen across the Thames at the hour when its Gothic silhouette dissolves into a furnace of orange and purple light. Monet worked from St. Thomas's Hospital, across the river from the Parliament buildings, under conditions of extreme atmospheric variability. The National Gallery of Art version shows the building reduced almost entirely to a dark mass against the blazing sky and water, Gothic turrets barely readable through the chromatic intensity.

Monet builds the sunset through layered strokes of orange, pink, and deep violet — warm tones in the sky and their reflections in the river creating a compositional unity that makes water and atmosphere mirror each other. The Parliament silhouette is rendered in cool dark tones of blue-violet that define it against the heat of the surrounding light.