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Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway

J. M. W. Turner · Romanticism & Landscape

Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851)
Date: 1844
Dimensions: 91 x 121.8 cm
Medium: Oil on canvas
Location: National Gallery, London, United Kingdom

Rain, Steam and Speed shows a steam train racing towards the viewer across the Maidenhead Railway Bridge over the Thames, through driving rain. It is one of the first great paintings to celebrate modern technology and speed.

A closer look

The black locomotive, its firebox glowing, emerges from a golden haze of rain and steam, its outline almost dissolving into the atmosphere. On the left, an older, slower world remains: a small boat on the river and a farmer ploughing a field. Ahead of the train, almost invisible, a hare runs along the track, perhaps an image of natural speed racing against the machine, or of its coming victim. Turner turns the experience of a new invention into a sensation of light and motion.

History of the painting

Turner showed the picture at the Royal Academy in 1844, when he was nearly seventy, and kept it until his death. It was part of the vast Turner Bequest, which after years of legal dispute came to the National Gallery in 1856. It has remained there ever since, while most of the bequest's other works moved to the Tate, and it is often seen as one of the first great paintings of the modern machine age.

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