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Distance: 3 miles
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| JMW Turner, Rain, Steam and Speed - The Great Western Railway, 1844, oil on canvas |
Thirty+ years before Caillebotte painted his 'rain' work (CIWT 15/9,10,11), JMW Turner was also looking at a new landscape in England. This time a landscape that had brought a massive shift from an agrarian econmy to one dominated by machine manufacturing. In a word, the upending of the Victorian era by the Industrial Revolution. And, like Caillebotte, Turner was one of the few artists to find things to embrace in this newness.
He accepts to the point of embracing that technological change is not going away. In fact, like the train it is racing toward us and the future. He also equates the immense power of torrential nature with the might of steamy technological power, finding both overwhelmingly thrilling, part of his ongoing fascination with the sublime.
The Great Western Railway he names in his title was an actual railway company and new means of travel, and the location of the painting is widely thought to be the Maidenhead Railway Bridge across the Thames. But, above these factual references, Turner is communicating the immense and emotionally awesome impression of stunningly intense velocity. And arguably he is the first artist to capture the sublime in both nature and the new technology advancing on the world..
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