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
ings often have considerable artistic merit and they carefully use selected aspects of the discourse of landscape art, but the discourse is bent to the specific aim of conveying a point to a potentially sceptical or fearful public. The earliest such collection was produced immediately after the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester railway by the publisher Rudolf Ackermann. Klingender comments: ‘To create the image of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway the directors were fortunate in enlisting the help of one of the greatest publishers of the day, Rudolf Ackermann’, a man who had already published a number of high quality books of promotional engravings (on Brighton Royal Pavilion, Oxford and Cambridge Universities, etc.).“ Ackermann employed T.T. Bury to produce the images and his Coloured Views of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway Line was published in 1831. It was accompanied by text describing the line and it sold well, going into 5 editions between 1831 and 1834. It was also produced in a number of foreign language editions on the continent. Klingender points out that the overseas editions ‘prepared the ground for the promotion of railways all over Europe, the greater number to be built by British contractors and powered by British locomotives’.26 27 Bury’s drawings are very simple, largely topographical and have the effect of diminishing the size and the power of the engines and the trains to give the appearance that one can stroll close by them without fear or danger. A different approach was adopted by J.W. Carmichael in his collection of Views on the Newcastle and Carlisle Railway (1836) which was commissioned by the Newcastle and Carlisle Railway Company, the first section of whose line was opened in 1835. The text for the publication was written by John Blackmore, the railway company’s engineer. Carmichael was an established artist well-known in the active early nineteenth century art world of Newcastle. For his views of the new railway line he chose a distinctly picturesque style: the trains, viaducts and depots were made to fit harmoniously into a landscape softened by billowing trees, by frothing clouds, by country folk going about their business. Where the trains are shown passing by stately homes (as in Ridley Hall) the viewer has the impression that it is rather the occupants of the house who have the advantage of the sight of the train, rather than simply the passengers who profit from such a beautiful panorama. The Railway in Arcadia: an approach to modernity in British visual culture 26 Klingender: Art and the Industrial Revolution, pp. 129-130. 27 Klingender: Art and the Industrial Revolution, p. 139. 123
