Houses of Parliament, Sunset

Le Parlement, coucher de soleil (Houses of Parliament, Sunset) is a painting by Claude Monet signed and dated "Claude Monet 1904" at lower left. It shows the Palace of Westminster as a blue-violet silhouette against a sky torn open by the setting sun, whose orange light spills down across the Thames. The canvas measures 81 by 92 centimeters and is in the Kunsthaus Zürich (inventory 1995/0003), a gift of Walter Haefner in 1995. Wildenstein lists it as number 1607. The museum calls it probably the most dramatic of the nineteen Parliament canvases.

What you're looking at

The palace stands in the right two-thirds of the canvas. The great square tower rises right of center, deep blue and topped with pinnacles; lower blocks spread to the left, and a tall spire stands half-lost at the right edge. The building is painted in blue, violet and indigo, solid near the water and dissolving at the top.

The sun is the event. At upper left, beyond the end of the palace, it bursts through the haze in a flare of orange, scarlet and yellow, painted in quick, streaking diagonal strokes that radiate across the violet sky like flames. The rest of the sky is a smoky purple-gray.

Below, the light falls on the river in a broad path of orange, gold and pink, broken into short horizontal strokes. It runs from the left side of the canvas toward the center, framed by blue and violet water on either side. The path of light connects the sun to the foreground and draws the eye across the whole picture.

Sunburst: what makes this version distinct

The Kunsthaus describes this as probably the most dramatic version of the theme. Most Parliament sunsets show either a soft, colored glow, as in Washington's golden The Houses of Parliament, Sunset, or a small, contained sun disk, as in the Barberini's Houses of Parliament, Sunset and Krefeld's Le Parlement, coucher de soleil. Here the sun explodes, and its energy carries into the brushwork itself.

The museum notes a comparison with the Musée d'Orsay's The Houses of Parliament in London, a gentler, more studio-reworked version with a sun breaking through fog, which entered the Louvre in 1911. It also places the Zurich picture in the tradition of Turner and Claude Lorrain, painters of the sun itself.

How it was painted

The museum's text confirms the viewpoint: a terrace of St Thomas' Hospital, near Westminster Bridge, on the opposite bank of the Thames. Monet worked there during his London trips of 1900 and 1901 and finished the canvases at Giverny, dating many of them 1903 or 1904 before his Thames exhibition at Durand-Ruel in 1904. The museum also records that Monet was reluctant to part with this canvas.

The streaks around the sun are laid on fast and wet, with a loaded brush; the palace is built from denser, vertical strokes; the reflection from short, flat touches of warm color over cooler blue.

From Durand-Ruel to Zurich

The Kunsthaus has published a full provenance. Durand-Ruel acquired the painting in 1905, and it went to the New York lawyer Charles Harrison Tweed, whose family lent it to a 1945 exhibition. It was sold at Parke-Bernet in 1960, passed to Louis Sachar, was sold at Christie's London in 1971 to the Hollywood producer Hal B. Wallis, and was auctioned again at Christie's New York in 1989, where the Swiss businessman Walter Haefner bought it. He lent it to the Kunsthaus and gave it in 1995 on the fiftieth anniversary of his company AMAG. The museum states that a Nazi-looted origin can be ruled out.

Details to look for

The spire at the far right edge is painted in a lighter blue-gray than the rest of the palace, as if it stood farther off in the haze. Look at the lower left corner, where the water turns dark blue-green and the reflected light fades out: Monet frames the bright path of the sun with cool, dark water on both sides.

Where to see it

The painting is in the Kunsthaus Zürich, which also holds Monet's Grainstack in Sunlight. See our Houses of Parliament series hub, Monet in London, Where to See Monet and Claude Monet.