Le Parlement, coucher de soleil

Le Parlement, coucher de soleil from 1904 at the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum in Krefeld represents one of the series' most intensely chromatic sunset views — the Parliament building barely a dark mass within a conflagration of orange and purple reflected across the Thames. Krefeld's museum, associated with the German textile industry's wealthy patrons, was an early institutional collector of French Impressionism. By 1904 the London series paintings were appearing on the market and attracting significant German as well as American and French buyers, demonstrating Monet's extraordinary international reach.

Orange dominates the upper half of the composition — a dense accumulation of warm strokes in the sky above the Parliament — while violet and deep blue-purple fill the lower river, the two zones separated by the dark silhouette of the building. The complementary contrast of orange and violet is pushed to maximum saturation.