Cruzando el arroyo

Turner showed this at the Royal Academy in 1815, the year of Waterloo, when more than twenty years of war with France had kept English travellers off the Continent. He had never once been to Italy. Yet here is an English river, the Tamar in Devon, dressed up to look thoroughly Italian, with golden light, framing trees, and a hazy blue distance straight out of the old master Claude Lorrain, whom Turner revered and meant to rival. The view runs down the valley toward Plymouth, with two young women and a dog fording the shallow brook of the title. Peace came that summer, and within a few years Turner finally crossed to Italy himself. The picture was part of the huge bequest he left the nation, and it hangs at Tate Britain.