Emile Claus Thames at Waterloo Bridge Postcard

Almost nothing else in this series looks like this. The Thames at Waterloo Bridge — a wide stone arch spanning the foreground, the silhouette of Big Ben and the Palace of Westminster in the middle distance, a plume of smoke from a chimney on the left — announces that Emile Claus has left Flanders behind entirely. He painted it during his wartime exile in London, between 1914 and 1918, and the sky tells you what held his attention most: two-thirds of the canvas is cloud, vast sculpted cumulus in cream and pearl-grey, built with the divisionist strokes he carried over from his river scenes.

The one card in this set for anyone drawn to Impressionist London rather than rural Flanders.