During his second stay in London, Monet painted several views of the Houses of Parliament from the terrace of Saint Thomas’s Hospital, on the opposite bank of the Thames. These had been rebuilt by the architect Charles Barry from 1840 to 1852, after fire had burned down the old buildings in 1834. Barry took his inspiration from Perpendicular Gothic, a style prominent in 15th-century English architecture. Monet does not try to capture the succession of verticals that characterize the buildings but instead offers a synthetic, ghostly version standing against the light of late afternoon, just when the sun is setting. The details disappear in broad zones of cold color dominated by the square “Victoria Tower” at the southwest corner of the building. Thirty-seven views of the Thames in London were exhibited at Durand-Ruel’s from May 9 to June 4, 1904. The exhibition had quite an impact, even if one journalist rather disconcerted admirers by claiming that Monet worked in part from photographs.