Regen, Dampf und Geschwindigkeit – Die Great Western Railway

When Turner showed this in 1844, the railway it celebrates was only a few years old. The bridge is the Maidenhead viaduct over the Thames, designed by the engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel and opened around 1839, and the train is a Great Western engine coming straight at the viewer out of the rain. On long level stretches like this one, these trains could touch about 60 miles an hour, faster than any galloping horse anyone watching had ever seen. Turner made that speed the real subject, dissolving the iron and the weather into one blur of light. If you look ahead of the engine on the track, he painted a hare running for its life, barely visible now because the thin paint has gone transparent with time. It hangs in the National Gallery in London.