Rain, Steam, and Speed - Joseph Mallord William Turner

Author: Joseph M. William Turner

Date: 1844

Museum: National Gallery of London

Characteristics: 122 x 91 cm.

Style: Romanticism

Material: oil on canvas

Rain, Steam, and Speed – The Great Western Railway is a painting made by one of the bests romantic artists, Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851).

The paint stand out because of the perfect use of light. This work of art was made in oil on canvas.

Here we can see a railway in a landscape. Turner sow us the latest railway, the GWR (Great Western Railway) which is crossing the Maidenhead bridge, above the Thames river and the railway is going to the East, London direction. The pinter use this new transport as a way to study the movement and the blurred at the painting.

The landscape is not clear, the railway travels throw the tracks going to the spectator. The locomotive capture the steam, the heavy atmosphere is blurred due to the rain and the speed is represent by a small hare that runs in the left side. The skyline divides the painting into two parts: the upper with the sky and the lower is the landscape, broken by the railway.

Some critics told the people to watch the painting before the railway gone out.

It is in the National Gallery of London.