Painted from the window of the seventeenth floor of the Department of the Environment, Marsham Street, Westminster, Coldstream discovered the view for The Chimney, Westminster Baths V, 1976-7, whilst attending meetings of the Government Art Collection Committee. He painted a series of ten works of Westminster seen from different viewpoints between 1973 and 1983, a number of which were shown in Coldstream’s first exhibition with Anthony d’Offay in 1976. Most of the Westminster scenes look out over the iconic London buildings - the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Cathedral - the architectural symbols of the dual powers of government and church. In The Chimney, Westminster Baths V, however, Coldstream turns his attention to the reality of urban living and London in all its facets, unflinchingly depicting the banality of residential and office-block architecture. Looking down into the asphalt streets of Westminster, Coldstream focuses on the Public Baths, now demolished, mansion blocks and post-war tower blocks. The architectural strata of the modern city are laid out with matter-of-fact clarity. In 1938, Coldstream, having just left the G.P.O. Film Unit the year previously, joined Tom Harrisson, Charles Madge and Humphrey Jennings in their social documentation project, Mass Observation. Travelling to northern industrial towns with Graham Bell, he painted a gritty cityscape of factory chimneys, smoke and smog, Bolton, 1938; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, from the of the Municipal Art Gallery in Bolton. Though Coldstream had long since left behind his youthful earnest socialism, his quest to understand and truthfully distil the modern condition of society never wavered. For the majority of the Westminster series, Coldstream casts his eye out far over London, seeing the city in the distance from lofty heights: The Chimney, Westminster Baths V looks directly down at the streets below. Westminster is seen from an oblique angle, tightly cropped with extreme recession, a dizzying perspective. All traditional rules of composition are broken with the centre of the canvas dominated by a broad expanse of the beige-brown flank of a large building adjacent to the red chimney of the baths. Just off-centre, the chimney bisects the picture, augmenting the steep view plunging to the streets below. The entirety of the canvas is treated with equal emphasis as Coldstream assesses with a dispassionate gaze. No one area takes compositional or colouristic precedence over another, all carries equal weighting. With dry paint and little visible brushwork, Coldstream builds up the scene with precision, control and deliberation.