London with the Houses of Parliament

The modern city, with its jumble of architectural styles and commercial bustle, held an enduring fascination for Kokoschka. Of all the many cities he painted throughout his career - Dresden, Prague, New York and Rome, to name but a few - he returned to London more than any other. In total, Kokoschka painted twelve views of the city over a period of nearly fifty years, usually taking the axis of the Thames as his focus. In so doing he joined a long and celebrated tradition of travelling foreign artists who painted London around the Thames such as Joli, Canaletto, Whistler and Monet. Not to mention such native talent as Scott, Constable and Turner (see fig. 1).
The earliest of the series are the three panoramic citycapes of London painted in the mid-1920s. The first work, London, Tower Bridge, now housed in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, was painted on Kokoschka's visit to London in 1925 and depicts Tower Bridge seen from the west. The following spring he returned, executing two works depicting both banks of the Thames (now housed in Buffalo, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, and Cardiff, National Museum of Wales). These pictures were painted in the early spring from rooms in the Savoy hotel - the same vantage point as had been chosen a quarter of a century earlier by Claude Monet for part of his celebrated series of views of the city.
There followed a hiatus of some thirty years until Kokoschka returned to the theme. During this time he had sought refuge in London in late 1938, fleeing the threatening atmosphere of post-Munich Agreement Prague. He stayed in Britain until 1953 - becoming a British subject in 1947 - and, even after his move to Switzerland, remained a regular visitor to England until his death.
The present work, London with the Houses of Parliament, was painted in 1967 and forms the penultimate work in the series. From a typically steepling viewpoint - a favourite device to enhance the dynamism of the subject - Kokoschka pivots the work on the two towers of the Parliament building on the north bank of the river. The bell tower of Big Ben stands at the right and the taller Victoria Tower, flying a flag, at the left. Opposite Parliament and across Westminster Bridge is St Thomas's Hospital - a position also chosen by Monet from which to depict Parliament in the later stage of his own London series (see fig. 2). Visible further upstream, towards the left of the composition, is Lambeth Bridge and, with the Millbank tower standing near its north end, Vauxhall Bridge.
Kokoschka's affection for London was matched by his excitement in the waterway of the Thames: 'Ich fand diesen Fluss immer ergreifend, er regt mich auf, wie andere in ihren warmen Betten patriotische Träume haben. Meine Themse! Man denke, dass damals noch auf diesem Fluss die Güter der ganzen Welt verschifft wurden, als London noch die Mutterstadt, die Metropole des Welthandels, die Pflanzstadt der Kolonien in allen vier Kontinenten war, wo der Wind nicht wie in Wien nur von der russischen Steppe, sondern aus allen vier Richtungen des Kompasses wehte....Die Themse, diese durch Jahrhunderte strömende Lebensader, versuchte ich immer wieder im Bilde festzuhalten - den Fluss, an dem Völkerscharen sich in einem Gemeinwesen mit einem eigenen Lebensstil vereinigten, die verschiedensten Rassen unter einen Hut gebracht wurden wie nur in den antiken Staaten einst in Asien oder China oder in der alten Donau-Monarchie...' (quoted in exh. cat. Oskar Kokoschka Städteportraits, op. cit., p. 96).