Günter Dinhobl (Hrsg.): Sonderband 7. Eisenbahn/Kultur – Railway/Culture (2004)

II. Die Wahrnehmungen von Raum / The perceptions of space - Jill Murdoch: The Railway in Arcadia: An Approach to Modernity in British Visual Culture

Jill Murdoch

These paintings made use of established landscape conventions demonstrating that neither the discourse nor the aesthetics of landscape art excluded the possibility of a varied commentary on new technology, on modernity. However, after the early years of the nineteenth century, industry and, in particular the railway, would not put in an appearance in landscape art again until the 1870s.

The Rural Myth

As Britain moved into the nineteenth century, the countryside had gone through the upheavals of the Enclosures and the Napoleonic Wars were beginning to cause serious problems. Poverty and homelessness were widespread in both city and countryside. Yet landscape art presented an image of rural bliss. Field enclosures were rarely shown and fat, contented peasants were seen in idle talk or in very gentle work. The emphasis was on the presentation of traditional social relations and traditional country pursuits. The reality of the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century countryside was obscured.

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Illustration 2: Arkwright's Mill at Cromford by Joseph Wright of Derby, 1783, oil on canvas.