The Houses of Parliament, Sunset

The Gothic silhouette of the Houses of Parliament looms as a flat blue-violet mass through the dense London fog, while the setting sun sets the Thames and the misty sky ablaze with orange and rose. Monet painted the Palace of Westminster again and again from across the river, obsessed with the city's smoke-laden atmosphere. Now in Washington's National Gallery, the Houses of Parliament, Sunset is among the finest of the London series - the solid architecture nearly dissolved, the true subject the fog itself, transfigured into a veil of glowing, shifting color.