Houses of Parliament, Sunset 1904

Claude Monet painted ‘Houses of Parliament, Sunset’ with oil on canvas to capture a moment. What's so great about oil paint is that it gives you time, it lets you push the image around, and Monet really uses that here. Just look at the texture, that build-up of pigment. It's thick, luscious, almost sculptural, and you can see the marks he made, the direction of his brushstrokes. Especially in the sky, he’s captured the light hitting the smog in these fleeting, feverish marks. And then you move down to the water and see those dragged marks, the hazy dissolution of the scene, it's all so evocative. I mean, it’s almost like he’s painting the air itself, not just the buildings. I’m reminded of Turner’s paintings of the Thames, and how he tried to evoke the energy of the industrial age. But Monet, he's doing something different, pushing toward abstraction, playing with perception, making something new.