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

The only prominent English artist who seemed able to do the same was J.M.W. Turner, who was recognised as the foremost landscape artist of his time. In some ways his works can be said to provide a sixth reason to be puzzled about the extent of the visual silence on railways. Turner only painted one oil of a railway subject and one watercolour (where the subject is implied rather than explicit), but both became very well known - indeed the oil {Rain, Steam and Speed) caused a sensation when exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1844 - and, given his pre-eminence, one would normally have expected a number of imitators. With the exception of an obvious homage by David Cox in his oil Wind, Rain and Sunshine in 1845 and a couple of fine watercolours by the same artist in 1849 (both versions of Night Train or Birmingham Express), there were none. Turner’s watercolour of Shields, on the River Tyne, painted in 1823 is ostensibly a view of the coal shipping on the Tyne, depicting the work of the keelmen. But poised on a cradle high over the workmen on the dock one can just discern a coal wagon on a wagon way, a detail that can be interpreted as a poignant reference to the new railway technology that would soon kill off the trade of keel men.'2

The Railway in Arcadia: an approach to modernity in British visual culture

Illustration 6: Rain, Steam and Speed - the Great Western Railway by J.M.W. Turner, 1844, oil on canvas.

12 H a m i 1 to n, James: Turner and the Scientists. London 1998, p. 95.

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