Object Description
‘Westminster from the Thames by Moonlight’ by Henry Pether (1800-1880).
The painting – one of the artist’s finest views of London in the 1860s – depicts the Houses of Parliament, the tower of Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, and the old foreshore as seen from the Thames. The artist’s own signed and inscribed label still adheres to the back of the original carved and water gilded exhibition frame.
The colour of the full moon tells us this is a nightscape of early summer; the Great Clock gives the time as twenty minutes to midnight. Although the new bridge and Palace of Westminster were both operational by 1862, construction of the new Victoria Embankment was not begun until February 1964, indicating Henry Pether painted the current work in the summer of 1863, the year in which the Great Clock began striking the hour.