Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway
J. M. W. Turner·1843
Historical Context
Turner exhibited Rain, Steam and Speed at the Royal Academy in 1844, depicting a Great Western Railway locomotive crossing the Maidenhead Bridge over the Thames at high speed during a rainstorm. The painting is widely regarded as the first great work of art to celebrate the railway age. Turner dissolves the locomotive, bridge, and landscape into veils of rain, steam, and golden light, creating an image of speed and modern technology that is simultaneously exhilarating and ominous. A tiny hare running ahead of the train on the tracks provides a poignant contrast between natural and mechanical speed. Now in the National Gallery, the painting confirmed Turner's position as the most forward-looking artist of his generation.
Technical Analysis
Turner achieves an extraordinary synthesis of representational subject and abstract atmospheric painting, with the locomotive emerging from veils of rain and steam rendered in broad, sweeping strokes. The golden, luminous palette dissolves solid engineering into pure light and movement.
Look Closer
- ◆Notice the locomotive emerging from the rain and steam: Turner gives the train just enough material solidity to be identifiable as the Great Western Railway's engine before dissolving it into the surrounding atmosphere.
- ◆Look at the hare running ahead of the train on the tracks: this tiny detail — easily missed in the overwhelming atmospheric effects — provides the painting's most poignant contrast between natural and mechanical speed.
- ◆Observe how the Maidenhead Bridge barely visible in the haze grounds the scene in specific English topography: Turner precisely locates this vision of modernity in an identifiable place.
- ◆Find the river visible below the bridge through the rain: the Thames, the subject of so many of Turner's paintings, appears as a grey-silver presence within the general atmospheric dissolution of rain and steam.
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