The towers of the Houses of Parliament rise as dark blue silhouettes against a sunset sky of orange, pink and violet, with a yellow glow at the upper left. The Thames below breaks the colors into flickering strokes of orange, yellow and blue, and a small boat with a single figure floats in the middle. The signature at lower right reads "Claude Monet 1903." Claude Monet painted his Parliament views from a balcony of St Thomas' Hospital, across the river, switching between canvases as the weather and light changed.

He came to London three times between 1899 and 1901 and reworked the pictures back in his studio at Giverny, which has made precise dating of the series impossible; this canvas is signed and dated 1903. In 1904 Monet showed 37 Thames views at Durand-Ruel's gallery in Paris, an enormously successful exhibition, and this one was sold that year to the Paris collector Edmond Décap. The collector Chester Dale acquired it at a Paris sale in 1929, and it came to the National Gallery of Art with his bequest in 1963. It is in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.