London in Painting: 12 Views of Fog, River and Fire
London gave painting two things nowhere else could: fog thick enough to dissolve a bridge, and a river so busy it doubled as a stage. Monet painted the Thames from a hotel window for three winters, and Whistler was taken to court over one canvas of it.
Twelve views to begin with
Monet made around a hundred canvases of the Thames, and complained when the fog thinned.
One nocturne of the river ended in a libel trial. The painter won and was awarded a farthing.
Canaletto spent nine years in London painting the city the way he had painted Venice.
Turner watched Parliament burn from a boat and made watercolours on the spot.
And one painter recorded the exact colour of the smog, which was caused by coal.
1 | The Houses of Parliament series, Claude Monet (1900 to 1904)
Monet worked from a balcony at the Savoy and from Saint Thomas’ Hospital, chasing the light through the smog, and finished the canvases back in France from memory and notes.
He said the fog was what gave London its wonderful breadth. More on him in Claude Monet.
2 | Nocturne in Black and Gold, James McNeill Whistler (1875)
Fireworks over Cremorne Gardens, painted as smears of light on near darkness. The critic John Ruskin said Whistler had flung a pot of paint in the public’s face.
Whistler sued, won, and was awarded one farthing in damages, which bankrupted him in costs. More in James McNeill Whistler.
3 | The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, JMW Turner (1835)
Parliament burned on the night of 16 October 1834. Turner joined the crowds on the river, sketched in watercolour from a boat, and turned it into two oil paintings.
The fire started with an overloaded stove burning old wooden tally sticks. More on him in JMW Turner.
4 | Canaletto’s London (1746 to 1755)
War cut off the Grand Tour, so Canaletto followed his customers to England and painted the Thames the way he had painted the lagoon, with the same clean light.
His London looks Venetian because he brought the formula with him. More in Canaletto.
5 | A Rake’s Progress, William Hogarth (1733)
Eight scenes tracking one man from an inheritance to Bethlem hospital, set in real London taverns, gambling rooms and debtors’ prisons.
Hogarth got a copyright act passed in 1735 to stop the pirating of his prints. More in William Hogarth.
6 | Work, Ford Madox Brown (1852 to 1865)
A Hampstead street dug open for a water main, with navvies, a flower seller, a ragged child and two thinkers standing to the right watching everyone else labour.
Brown took thirteen years on it. More of that world in blacksmiths and workers in painting.
7 | Derby Day and the London crowd, William Powell Frith (1858)
Painted from photographs and hired models, it drew such crowds at the Royal Academy that a rail had to be installed to hold the public back.
Only three paintings had ever needed that rail before.
8 | The Thames as a working river
Before it was picturesque the Thames was cargo, coal, sewage and cholera. The Great Stink of 1858 forced Parliament to fund the sewers.
The fog painters loved was largely coal smoke trapped by damp air.
9 | Whistler’s Thames etchings (1859 to 1871)
Before the nocturnes, Whistler etched the wharves at Wapping and Rotherhithe in fine dry lines, closer to reporting than to poetry.
The technique is explained in what is etching.
10 | Sargent in Chelsea
After the Madame X scandal in Paris, John Singer Sargent moved to Tite Street in Chelsea and became the portraitist London society queued for.
He later gave up society portraits almost entirely. More in John Singer Sargent.
11 | The Blitz and the war artists
An official scheme sent painters into shelters, docks and bombed streets between 1939 and 1945, producing thousands of works now split between the Imperial War Museum and the Tate.
It was the largest state commission of painting Britain ever ran.
12 | The fog that stopped
The Great Smog of December 1952 killed thousands and led to the Clean Air Act of 1956. The London that Monet painted stopped existing within a lifetime of him painting it.
You can date a London painting by how thick the air is.
London on canvas, common questions
Why did Monet paint London in winter? He wanted the fog, and he complained on clear days that there was nothing to paint.
What was the Whistler trial about? Ruskin called his nocturne a pot of paint flung at the public. Whistler sued for libel in 1878, won, and received a farthing.
Why does Canaletto’s London look Italian? He arrived in 1746 with the same compositional formula he had used in Venice and applied it to the Thames.
Did Turner see the Parliament fire? Yes. He sketched it from the river on the night of 16 October 1834 and painted two oils from those sketches.
Where can I see these? Tate Britain for Turner and Whistler, the National Gallery for Canaletto, and the Imperial War Museum for the war artists.
The detail that stays with me: Monet’s London canvases were finished in Giverny, hundreds of miles away, from notes. The most famous paintings of English weather were completed in France.
More painted London sits at the Tate and the Rijksmuseum.