Humanity and Nature in the Steamboat Paintings of J.M.W. Turner

Abstract

The year 1851 witnessed the Great Exhibition, Britain's celebration of technological achievement. Thousands of curious and excited visitors from the world over flocked to Joseph Paxton's futuristic Crystal Palace to marvel at the various exhibits which underscored, not only Britain's commercial and industrial preeminence, but also the Victorian faith in progress and the triumph of the machine.Less noticed, late that same year, was the passing of one of the most perceptive observers of the new age, the veteran artist J.M.W. Turner. This great English Romantic, famed for his paintings of bucolic landscapes, storms at sea, and Alpine avalanches, also had drawn significant inspiration from the new forces which were then rapidly transforming Britain and the world. A notable body of his work, particularly the efforts of his later career, exist as complex visual commentaries on the reality and the meaning of nineteenth century industrialism. Watercolors of blackened mills, polluted skies, and steam locomotion capture the face of change, while great oils such as The Fighting Temeraire and Snow Storm—Steam–Boat off a Harbour's Mouth symbolize a dynamic new age.