Claude Monet
Oscar-Claude Monet (, ; ; 14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926) was a French painter and founder of Impressionism painting who is seen as a key precursor to modernism, especially in his attempts to paint nature as he perceived it. During his ...
painted several
series
Series may refer to:
People with the name
* Caroline Series (born 1951), English mathematician, daughter of George Series
* George Series (1920–1995), English physicist
Arts, entertainment, and media
Music
* Series, the ordered sets used i ...
of nearly 100
impressionist
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by visible brush strokes, open Composition (visual arts), composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage ...
oil paintings of different views of the
Thames River
The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the second-longest in the United Kingdom, after the ...
in the autumn of 1899 and the early months of 1900 and 1901 during stays in London. One of these series consists of views of the
Palace of Westminster
The Palace of Westminster is the meeting place of the Parliament of the United Kingdom and is located in London, England. It is commonly called the Houses of Parliament after the House of Commons and the House of Lords, the two legislative ch ...
, home of the
British Parliament
The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, and may also legislate for the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It meets at the Palace of ...
, and he began the first of these paintings at about 15.45 on 13 February 1900. All of the series' paintings share the same viewpoint from Monet's window or a terrace at
St Thomas' Hospital
St Thomas' Hospital is a large NHS teaching hospital in Central London, England. Administratively part of the Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust, together with Guy's Hospital, Evelina London Children's Hospital, Royal Brompton Hospita ...
overlooking the
Thames
The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the second-longest in the United Kingdom, after th ...
and the approximate canvas size of 81 cm × 92 cm (32 in × 36 3/8 in). They are, however, painted during different times of the day and weather conditions.
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 home in
Art Institute of Chicago
The Art Institute of Chicago, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the United States. The museum is based in the Art Institute of Chicago Building in Chicago's Grant Park (Chicago), Grant Park. Its collection, stewa ...
File:Monet Houses of Parliament, Sunset.jpg, ''Parlement, coucher du soleil'' (sunset), 1902, private collection
File:Brouillard, London Parliament, Claude Monet.jpg, ''Le Parlement, Effet de Brouillard'', 1903, Museum of Fine Arts (St. Petersburg, Florida)
File:Claude Monet - Houses of Parliament in the Fog - High Museum of Art.jpg, ''Houses of Parliament in the Fog'', 1903,
High Museum of Art
The High Museum of Art (colloquially the High) is the largest museum for visual art in the Southeastern United States. Located in Atlanta, Georgia (on Peachtree Street in Midtown, the city's arts district), the High is 312,000 square feet (28, ...
File:Monet, Claude, Houses of Parliament, Seagulls.jpg, ''The Houses of Parliament, Seagulls'', 1903,
Princeton University Art Museum
The Princeton University Art Museum (PUAM) is the Princeton University gallery of art, located in Princeton, New Jersey. With a collecting history that began in 1755, the museum was formally established in 1882, and now houses over 117,000 work ...
File:Claude Monet - The Houses of Parliament, Sunset.jpg, ''The Houses of Parliament, Sunset'', 1903,
National Gallery of Art
The National Gallery of Art is an art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of charge, the museum was privately established in ...
Washington, DC.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...
File:Claude Monet - Houses of Parliament, Sunlight Effect (Le Parlement, effet de soleil) - Google Art Project.jpg, ''Houses of Parliament Sunlight Effect (Le Parlement effet de soleil),'' 1903,
Brooklyn Museum
The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum in the New York City borough (New York City), borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 500,000 objects. Located near the Prospect Heig ...
File:The Houses of Parliament (Effect of Fog) MET DT1893.jpg, ''The Houses of Parliament (Effect of Fog)'', 1903–1904,
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of larg ...
File:London, the Houses of Parliament, Sunlight Opening in Fog, by Claude Monet.jpg, ''Trouée de soleil dans le brouillard'' (Sun Breaking Through the Fog) Houses of Parliament, 1904. London, Sun Breaking Through the Fog, 1904
Musée d'Orsay
The Musée d'Orsay ( , , ) () is a museum in Paris, France, on the Rive Gauche, Left Bank of the Seine. It is housed in the former Gare d'Orsay, a Beaux-Arts architecture, Beaux-Arts railway station built from 1898 to 1900. The museum holds mai ...
,
Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
File:Monet - Le Parlement de Londres, ciel orageux.jpg, ''Houses of Parliament, stormy sky'', 1904,
Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille
The Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille (''Lille Palace of Fine Arts'') is a municipal museum dedicated to fine arts, modern art, and antiquities located in Lille. It is one of the largest art museums in France.
It was one of the first museums built i ...
,
Lille, France
Lille (, ; ; ; ; ) is a city in the northern part of France, within French Flanders. Positioned along the Deûle river, near France's border with Belgium, it is the capital of the Hauts-de-France Regions of France, region, the Prefectures in F ...
File:Claude Monet - Le Parlement, coucher de soleil - Kunsthaus Zürich.jpg, ''Houses of Parliament, London,'' ca. 1904,
Kunsthaus Zürich
The Kunsthaus Zürich is an art museum in Zurich. It is the biggest art museum in Switzerland by area and houses one of the most important art collections in Switzerland, assembled over time by the Zürcher Kunstgesellschaft, a nonprofit art soc ...
File:Seagulls, the Thames & Houses of Parliament by Claude Monet, Pushkin Museum.JPG, ''Seagulls, the River Thames and the Houses of Parliament'', 1904,
Pushkin Museum
The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts (, abbreviated as , ''GMII'') is the largest museum of European art in Moscow. It is located in Volkhonka street, just opposite the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. The International musical festival Sviatos ...
File:Claude Monet, Londres, Le Parlement, Reflets sur la Tamise, 1905, huile sur toile, Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris.jpg, ''Houses of Parliament, London,''
Musée Marmottan Monet
Musée Marmottan Monet () is an art museum in Paris, France, dedicated to artist Claude Monet. The collection features over three hundred Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings by Claude Monet, including his 1872 ''Impression, Sunrise''. ...
, 1905
File:Claude Monet - Le Parlement, soleil couchant (W 1604).jpg, ''Le Parlement, soleil couchant (Houses of Parliament, Sunset),'' 1900-1903, Hasso Plattner Collection
File:Monet - Das Parlamentsgebäude in London, 1904.jpg, ''Houses of Parliament, London,''
Kunstmuseen Krefeld
The Kunstmuseen Krefeld (''Krefeld Art Museums'') is collection of three art museum, art museums in Krefeld, Germany. and particularly dedicated to modern art, modern and contemporary art. Comprising the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum, the Haus Lange an ...
, 1904
File:Palace of Westminster, London - Feb 2007.jpg, Modern view of the Houses of Parliament at dusk in an approximately identical angle. The paintings were framed to exclusively depict the leftmost half of the building, with
Victoria Tower
The Victoria Tower is a square tower at the south-west end of the Palace of Westminster in London, adjacent to Black Rod's Garden on the west and Old Palace Yard on the east. At , it is slightly taller than the Elizabeth Tower (known formerly a ...
as the focal point.
Context
Under exile during the
Franco-Prussian War
The Franco-Prussian War or Franco-German War, often referred to in France as the War of 1870, was a conflict between the Second French Empire and the North German Confederation led by the Kingdom of Prussia. Lasting from 19 July 1870 to 28 Janua ...
, Monet travelled to London for the first time in 1870. Monet became enthralled with the city, and vowed to return to it someday. Monet's fascination with London lay primarily in its fogs, a byproduct of the
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution, sometimes divided into the First Industrial Revolution and Second Industrial Revolution, was a transitional period of the global economy toward more widespread, efficient and stable manufacturing processes, succee ...
. But writers hypothesize that Monet was also inspired by contemporaries
J. M. W. Turner
Joseph Mallord William Turner (23 April 177519 December 1851), known in his time as William Turner, was an English Romantic painter, printmaker and watercolourist. He is known for his expressive colouring, imaginative landscapes and turbu ...
and
James Abbott McNeill Whistler
James Abbott McNeill Whistler (; July 10, 1834July 17, 1903) was an American painter in oils and watercolor, and printmaker, active during the American Gilded Age and based primarily in the United Kingdom. He eschewed sentimentality and moral a ...
, who were similarly fascinated by London's atmosphere and atmospheric effects in general. Thus, in 1899, Monet returned to London and rented a room in the
Savoy Hotel
The Savoy Hotel is a luxury hotel located in the Strand in the City of Westminster in central London, England. Built by the impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte with profits from his Gilbert and Sullivan opera productions, it opened on 6 August 1 ...
, which offered an extensive viewpoint from which to begin his series of the city.
Between 1899 and 1905 Monet periodically travelled to London to paint. In addition to the ''Houses of Parliament'' paintings, Monet created other paintings of the city's sights, including the Charing Cross Bridge series and Waterloo Bridge series. While Monet began all of the paintings in London, he completed many of them in his studio in
Tate Britain
Tate Britain, known from 1897 to 1932 as the National Gallery of British Art and from 1932 to 2000 as the Tate Gallery, is an art museum on Millbank in the City of Westminster in London, England. It is part of the Tate network of galleries in En ...
in London exhibited six paintings of the series, together in a single room, for the duration of a temporary exhibition titled ''Impressionists in London, French artists in exile (1870–1904)'', devoted to the temporary exile of French and
impressionist
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by visible brush strokes, open Composition (visual arts), composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage ...
artists in London during the
Franco-Prussian War
The Franco-Prussian War or Franco-German War, often referred to in France as the War of 1870, was a conflict between the Second French Empire and the North German Confederation led by the Kingdom of Prussia. Lasting from 19 July 1870 to 28 Janua ...
. This was a rare occurrence because no museum owns or exhibits more than two in a permanent collection.
The paintings were also shown at the
Petit Palais
The (; ) is an art museum in the 8th arrondissement of Paris, France.
Built for the Exposition Universelle (1900), 1900 Exposition Universelle ("universal exhibition"), it now houses the City of Paris Museum of Fine Arts (''Musée des beaux-arts ...
when the temporary exhibition travelled from London to Paris.
The six paintings were the examples from the following collections:
*
Art Institute of Chicago
The Art Institute of Chicago, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the United States. The museum is based in the Art Institute of Chicago Building in Chicago's Grant Park (Chicago), Grant Park. Its collection, stewa ...
*
Brooklyn Museum
The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum in the New York City borough (New York City), borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 500,000 objects. Located near the Prospect Heig ...
* Kaiser Wilhelm Museum
*
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of larg ...
*
Musée d'Orsay
The Musée d'Orsay ( , , ) () is a museum in Paris, France, on the Rive Gauche, Left Bank of the Seine. It is housed in the former Gare d'Orsay, a Beaux-Arts architecture, Beaux-Arts railway station built from 1898 to 1900. The museum holds mai ...
*
Museum of modern art André Malraux - MuMa
A museum is an institution dedicated to displaying or preserving culturally or scientifically significant objects. Many museums have exhibitions of these objects on public display, and some have private collections that are used by researchers ...
''Monet & Architecture''
Again in 2018 the
National Gallery
The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London, England. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of more than 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The current di ...
in London exhibited three paintings of the series, together in a single room, for the duration of a temporary exhibition titled ''Monet & Architecture'', devoted to
Claude Monet
Oscar-Claude Monet (, ; ; 14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926) was a French painter and founder of Impressionism painting who is seen as a key precursor to modernism, especially in his attempts to paint nature as he perceived it. During his ...
's use of architecture as a means to structure and enliven his art. This was a rare occurrence because no museum owns or exhibits more than two in a permanent collection.
The three paintings exhibited were the examples from the following collections:
* Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg
*
Kunsthaus Zürich
The Kunsthaus Zürich is an art museum in Zurich. It is the biggest art museum in Switzerland by area and houses one of the most important art collections in Switzerland, assembled over time by the Zürcher Kunstgesellschaft, a nonprofit art soc ...
*
Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille
The Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille (''Lille Palace of Fine Arts'') is a municipal museum dedicated to fine arts, modern art, and antiquities located in Lille. It is one of the largest art museums in France.
It was one of the first museums built i ...
See also
*
List of paintings by Claude Monet
This is a list of works by Claude Monet (1840–1926), including all the extant finished paintings but Water Lilies (Monet series), excluding the ''Water Lilies'', which can be found here, and preparatory black and white sketches.