L'Incendie des chambres du Parlement

On the night of October 16, 1834, the old Palace of Westminster caught fire. The cause was mundane. Clerks had been burning years of worn-out wooden tally sticks in a furnace, and the overheated flue set the building alight. Crowds gathered along the Thames to watch the seat of British government burn, and Turner was among them, sketching from a hired boat and the far bank. He painted two versions of the blaze afterward. In this one the fire pours gold and white across the water toward Westminster Bridge, the stone buildings already dissolving into it, and he raised the flames far higher than they truly stood. The medieval Parliament that burned that night was replaced by the Gothic building with Big Ben that stands on the spot now.