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Joseph Mallord William Turner (English, 1775–1851)
The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, 16th October, 1834, exhibited 1835
Oil on canvas; 36 1/2 x 48 1/2 in. (92 x 123 cm)
Philadelphia Museum of Art, The John Howard McFadden Collection, 1928
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This work is the first of two oils that Turner painted of the catastrophic fire that destroyed the Houses of Parliament on the night of October 16, 1834. Although Turner witnessed the event and filled two sketchbooks in response, he possibly based this composition on the account published in the Times the following day: "The light reflected from the flames of the fire … and every place in the neighborhood was visible." This description might have influenced Turner's rendering of the sky, which prompted the critics' complaint that it was too light a blue for a nocturnal scene. A fellow artist described the picture as "a mere dab of several colours," which Turner, working almost entirely with a palette knife, transformed over the course of a morning on one of the Varnishing Days at the British Institution, where it was first exhibited in 1835.
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