Here we are presented with a scene depicting the River Thames, Houses of Parliament, Westminster Bridge and Big Ben. The brushstrokes have been fragmented into multiple coloured spots to render the density of the atmosphere and the mist of the city. The work is a wonderful example of Pointillism, a technique of painting in which small, distinctive dots of colour are applied to form an image. This technique was developed in 1886 and branched from Impressionism.

The artist’s use of complimentary colours provides a strong contrast between the orange and yellows in the sky and the deep blues and purples in the city’s building and forms. Notably, the sky and water are painted with the same tones and in between them, presented as an unreal and ghostly apparition, the building appear behind the bridge alike an apparition.

Claude Monet painted a series of very similar scenes of the Houses of Parliament in 1904 and it is clear that must have been influential in the creation of this work. Monet’s infamous series of eleven paintings were created during his stay in the British capital at the turn of the century. The main theme of the series was the mesmerising effects of light beneath the fog and the atmospheric variations of the immense metropolitan city.