Joseph Turner’s style of painting is, in my mind, one of the most emotionally compelling bodies of work to come out of the 19th century. This appeal, however, comes from the way he presents his material, rather than its immediate content—a sharp departure from the context of historical paintings, which thrive on their physically personified message with epic figures, their actions dominating the frames. Turner, conversely, maintains a contemporary political commentary with a much more subdued emotional appeal: his paintings are tornadoes of colors, bleeding into one another in a mass confusion of light and image until a conceptual continuity finds the viewer’s eye, and everything seems clear.

    Rain, Steam, and Speed personifies that confusion with its signpost title helping to immediately disentangle and comprehend the image on the canvas. Turner’s work as an inspiration for impressionism is evident here in the massive background space allotted for the sky. Yet he cannot be typecast as a Realist painter, the period to which he would be ascribed given his temporal existence. Turner is on the cusp of impressionism, leaving him only to be a Pre-Impressionist with the likes of Manet. The railroad, bridge in the foreground, and train take up a relatively small part of the frame, allowing the massive landscape to dominate our perception of the image. This, in turn, likens train and sky in the painting’s importance, allowing them equal part in defining Turner’s work. While the train—and industrial modernization, by association—is the painting’s subject, it is the sky and land that allow the steam and speed to be part of the “great Western railway.”

    The type of locomotive crossing the bridge furthers this union between nature and industry. Turner modeled his train off of the latest model of steam locomotive known as the “Firefly Class,” embracing the innovation and boundaries crossed by the Industrial Revolution. The engine and its modernity hurtle through the rain, right at the audience. This gesture of acceptance pointed towards the train is our clearest indication of Turner’s leanings. Instead of cutting through the landscape, the locomotive seems to appear out of its deep and murky trail, a result of—rather than a reaction against—mankind’s time spent in these same pastures.  At the same time, however, Turner is careful to keep these two forces separate: while land and sky fuse together, the brown and black locomotive provides a clear contrast to the sandy sky and ghost-like bridge, with the harsh straight lines of the modernization’s tracks cutting across what would be an otherwise technologically untouched pastoral landscape. Yet the separation disappears as we trace the track farther and farther towards the painting’s background, again equating train and nature as one wild swirling mass of rain, steam, and speed that is flanked by the blues of an emerging sky, the only sign of an outside force we are given. The slow distinction of the locomotive, then, seems to be born out of Turner’s fields and sky, endorsing this new step of mankind’s innovation.

    Turner was an exception to the general sentiment towards this modernization. Artists in general took issue with England’s Industrial Revolution and vigor with which the fields and pastures of England were being inlaid with railroad tracks and other signs of industry. Yet as we can see, Turner embraced these progressions as history moving forward, just as his train is leaving behind its puffs of smoke to serve as a remembrance of its past.

    Looking closer, however, this endorsement of modernization may only be half-hearted. The inclusion of a fisherman underneath the bridge points to industrialization’s “passing over” of old, traditional methods of food and transportation—both represented by the fishing boat. The fields, another symbol of constancy and the past, are nowhere near as clear-cut as their industrial counterpart is streaking across the plains.

    In response to a first viewing of Turner’s painting, critic and novelist W.M. Thackeray commented, “the world has never seen anything like this picture.” But Turner ended up serving as a motivational pioneer for the entire Impressionist movement. His vast landscapes—of which Rain, Steam, and Speed is a fantastic example—were sure to be imitated and studied time and time again by Monet and the Impressionist school of art. At the time of Rain, Steam, and Speed’s release in 1844, however, Turner’s work was a pioneering step furthering Britain’s political and industrial supremacy in the European 19th century. Queen Victoria had come into power seven years prior, bringing with her an avid patronage for the arts. 1838 saw the National Gallery open in London’s Trafalgar Square—the very heart of the city—and was accessible to all levels of England’s social hierarchy. At this point Turner’s place as an artistic figurehead was cemented in England’s history, and Rain, Steam, and Speed served as a consummation of Turner’s style.