During the years between 1899 and 1905, Monet travelled to London to capture its sights from the fifth-floor balcony of the Savoy Hotel. Monet was captivated by the London fog, a notable atmospheric effect made markedly worse by the heavy pollution of the Industrial Revolution. He painted the Houses of Parliament, Waterloo Bridge, and Charing Cross Bridge over and over, as he had earlier done with haystacks and Rouen Cathedral, dashing off paintings to capture fleeting atmospheric effects. He was extremely prolific, beginning nearly 100 paintings in London.[1] Thirty-seven of the canvases were of Charing Cross Bridge, only twelve of which he finished in London; the rest he took back to his Giverny studio for completion.
Oscar-Claude Monet (1840–1926) was a founder of French Impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting.
