The artwork “Parliament, Reflections on the Thames” is an oil on canvas cityscape created by the celebrated Impressionist artist Claude Monet in the year 1905. This painting exemplifies the Impressionist movement, with its loose brushwork and vivid interplay of light and color. The artwork resides in the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris, France, where visitors can appreciate its vibrant depiction of the British Houses of Parliament with the Thames in the foreground.
In this masterful cityscape, Monet portrays the grandeur of the Parliament buildings shrouded in a mystical and enveloping fog. The reflections on the surface of the Thames are crafted with dappled strokes of color, capturing the changing effects of light with effervescent blues, golds, and touches of pink and orange. The sky above melds together delicate hues that echo the dynamic and transitory nature of the atmosphere. Monet’s technique of using fragmented color and rapid brushwork creates a surface that seems to pulse with energy, giving the viewer a sense of the fleeting moment that the artist has endeavored to capture. The vertical lines of the Parliament’s architecture serve as a stark contrast to the fluid ripples and soft textures of the sky and water, demonstrating Monet’s fascination with the interplay between man-made structures and the natural world.
