A towering silhouette of the Houses of Parliament rises from a haze of blue and violet, its vertical form dominating the center of the composition. The building’s outline appears softened and blurred, as if dissolving into the surrounding mist that fills the air and water. To the right, spires and turrets break the skyline, their shapes rendered in deep blue and touched with hints of orange and yellow where the setting sun glows through the fog.

The sky is alive with broad, visible brushstrokes in lavender, pink, and pale turquoise, creating a swirling, luminous atmosphere above the river. Below, the Thames reflects the sky’s colors in shimmering, horizontal strokes, with patches of pale yellow and blue rippling across the water’s surface. No figures or boats are visible, but a single, indistinct dark shape emerges from the water near the lower center, adding a subtle note of movement.

The paint is applied in loose, layered strokes, giving the surface a textured, almost vibrating quality that suggests the shifting light and air. The composition is balanced by the strong vertical of the central tower and the horizontal sweep of the river, while the sky and water merge at the horizon in a seamless band of color. The artist’s signature appears in the lower right corner, written in reddish-brown paint. According to the Art Institute of Chicago, Monet painted this view from a terrace at Saint Thomas’s Hospital, capturing the Houses of Parliament in the late afternoon or at sunset.

The museum notes that Monet’s viewpoint was close to that of J. M. W.

Turner, but that Monet was inspired by the atmospheric effects found in James McNeill Whistler’s paintings of the Thames. The painting was owned by several collectors in Paris and New York before being purchased by Martin A. Ryerson in 1916, and later bequeathed to the Art Institute of Chicago in 1933. The museum’s record places this work within Monet’s London campaigns, where he repeatedly returned to the same motif under varying atmospheric conditions.