In “ Rain, Steam, and Speed – The Great Western Railway”, one of his later artworks, Turner represents the explosive power of the future: a train at full speed on the Maidenhead Railway Bridge. Past is pulled by the propulsive force of steam. In “ The Fighting Temeraire, tugged to her last berth to be broken up”, the warship Temeraire is pulled by a small steam-tug, toward her last trip before dismantling. Steam is the symbol of the future and a key element in Turner’s paintings. Turner lived during the English Industrial Revolution: in that period ancients and gods were substituted by science and technology. Turner, Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway, 1844 For the same reason, he is alone and in contrast with society. The Romantic artist wants to free-express his feelings, without any kind of objective representation criteria. Classical aesthetic canon was fading in art, too. Romantic ideals were based on the rejection of Rationalism and Classicism, ideals that failed with the French Revolution and the Restoration. This artwork, praised by the critic, founded his reputation as a landscape painter.
In this nocturnal moonlit scene, he shows his mastery of the light, which is the real protagonist in the canvas. In 1796, Turner exhibited for the first time in the Royal Academy one of his oil paintings: “Fisherman at Sea”. This was a rich intellectual environment, and Turner was very interested in scientific lectures about new discoveries. Brilliant and talented, he was admitted to the Royal Academy at 14 years old. Turner was born in 1775, in a middle-class family in Covent Garden.
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