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| Keywords: Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway.jpg Artwork Creator Joseph Mallord William Turner Rain Steam and Speed - The Great Western Railway; the painting depicts an early locomotive of the Great Western Railway crossing the River Thames on Brunel's recently completed Maidenhead Railway Bridge The painting is also credited for allowing a glimpse of the Romantic strife within Turner and his contemporaries over the issue of the technological advancement during the Industrial Revolution see below Regen Dampf und Geschwindigkeit der Zug »Great Western« Lluvia vapor y velocidad El gran ferrocarril del Oeste Pluie Vapeur et Vitesse - Le Grand Chemin de Fer de l Ouest Pioggia vapore e velocità Дождь па и ско ость 1844 Oil on canvas cm 91 121 8 Institution National Gallery London 34 credit line Turner Bequest 1856 NG538 http //www nationalgallery org uk/paintings/joseph-mallord-william-turner-rain-steam-and-speed-the-great-western-railway See below other versions Social Commentary Turner was a well traveled man frequently trekking to natural wonders of mainland Europe and the British Isles to sketch them in one of his dozens of notepads He knew of the pains one must take to travel off the beaten path and wrote of one such occasion traveling from Rome to Paris to a friend in 1829 we never could keep warm or make our day s distance good the places we put up at proved all bad till Firenzola being even the worst for the down diligence people had devoured everything eatable Beds none crossed Mont Cenis on a sledge bivouaced in the snow with fire lighted for 3 Hours on Mont Tarate while the diligence was righted and dug out for a Bank of Snow saved it from upsetting and in the walk up to our knees in new fallen drift to get assistance to dig a channel thro it for the coach so that from Foligno to within 20 miles of Paris I never saw the road but snow 1 Fifteen years later Turner s 1844 masterpiece Rain Steam and Speed The Great Western Railway in a way recognizes his thrill in the speed of the new coal train and his appreciation for such technology when traveling Yet he subtly recognizes the progressive threat that humans pose towards the cradle of the earth The title follows the Turner pattern of 'nature first' in his titles but at once you see what looks like a monstrous kiln underneath the rail bridge and flames engulfing the ecstatic figures on the far side of the river On top of the bridge you see the face of a demon with the body of a coal burning centipede which itself looks like a line of glowing embers Ahead of the train it is hard to spot the tiny hare at full sprint trying to stay ahead of the state-of-the-art technology of the mid-1800 s What is so interesting about this piece Olivier Meslay points out in his book JMW Turner The Man Who Set Painting on Fire is that the notion of the sublime was no longer confined to natural phenomena but incarnated in machines created by humanity with god-like aspirations whose new power it served to magnify and begs to question; what should we fear more the awe of the wild or the annihilation of it 2 1 Meslay Olivier JMW Turner The Man Who Set Painting On Fire London Thames Hudson Ltd 2005 Pg 133 2 Ibid Pg 107 PD-Art-100 ImageNote 1 4616 3313 188 210 5661 4226 2 One hare ImageNoteEnd 1 Rain Steam and Speed The Great Western Railway | ||||
