Charing Cross Bridge, London

<p>Beginning in September 1899, Claude Monet made almost one hundred paintings of the river Thames in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFPs_cRRGdM&t=4s">London</a>. These works show only three different views—Charing Cross Bridge and Waterloo Bridge, both painted from the Savoy Hotel; and the Houses of Parliament, painted from Saint Thomas’s Hospital. In the smoggy, industrial city, Monet challenged himself to capture effects of light seen through a dense atmospheric screen. Beyond the rectilinear skeleton of Charing Cross Bridge—reminiscent of bridges in Japanese prints, which the artist collected—rises the ghostlike silhouette of the Houses of Parliament.</p>