Houses of Parliament series (Monet)

Main article: Claude Monet

Claude Monet painted a series of paintings of the Palace of Westminster, home of the British Parliament, during his stays in London between the years 1900-1904. The paintings have all the same size and viewpoint, Monet's window at St Thomas' Hospital overlooking the Thames. They are however painted at different times of the day and at different weather circumstances.

By now he had abandoned his earlier working 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.

Gallery

Some of the paintings in the London Parliament series:

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  Houses of Parliament, London, 1900-1901 The Art Institute of Chicago

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  Parlement, coucher du soleil (sunset), 1902, private collection

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  Le Parlement, Effet de Brouillard, 1903, Museum of Fine-Arts, St. Petersburg, Florida

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  Le Parlement de Londres, soleil couchant, 1903, National Gallery of Art Washington, DC.

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  Houses of Parliament Sunlight Effect (Le Parlement effet de soleil), 1903, Brooklyn Museum

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  Trouée de soleil dans le brouillard, Houses of Parliament, London, Sun Breaking Through the Fog, 1904, Musée d'Orsay, Paris

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  Houses of Parliament, London, Musée Marmottan Monet c.1904

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  Houses of Parliament, stormy sky, 1904, Palace of Fine-Arts, Lille, France

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  Houses of Parliament, London, c. 1904, Kunsthaus Zürich

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  Photograph of the Houses of Parliament from London Eye

Further reading

• Baker, Jacob; Thornes, John E. (8 December 2006). "Solar Position within Monet's Houses of Parliament". Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences 462 (2076): 3775–3788. Bibcode 2006RSPSA.462.3775B. doi:10.1098/rspa.2006.1754.