Thames

In the autumn of 1899 Claude Monet took rooms on the fifth floor of the Savoy Hotel and began the Thames pictures he kept returning to over three stays in London, nearly 100 canvases in all. Angèle Delasalle was working on the same river in those years. A French state travel grant had sent her to Italy, the Netherlands and England, and what she brought back from England was an admiration for Turner. This canvas is dated 1900 and is small, about 51 by 76 centimetres. The air over the water then was thick with coal smoke from the city's chimneys and from the steamers and colliers moored in it, which is why London fogs of those decades were yellowish. The painting is in Athens because Argyris Chatziargyris, one of the early donors to the National Gallery there, gave it to the collection.