Science in the Arts
On Storms, Ships, and Railways. J.M.W. Turner
Marek H. Dominiczak*
Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) was a
Cockney-speaking Londoner born in Covent Garden
(1, 2 ). His life encompasses the time of intense development of industrial infrastructure in England, including the networks of canals and railways. It was also a
period of particularly interesting interactions between
artists, scientists, and industrialists.
Turner lived close to the River Thames and not far
the from Somerset House on the Strand, which was, in
the second half of the 18th century, the hub of science
and the arts. It housed the Royal Society and the Royal
Academy. This close proximity greatly facilitated exchanges between scientists and artists. In addition, the
Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, founded in 1754, promoted new
inventions. Later, the Royal Institution (founded in
1799) aimed to achieve wider public understanding of
natural philosophy (3 ).
Literature and the arts in the second half of the
18th century were departing from the strict rationality
of the Enlightenment. What became known as the romantic movement stressed the value of emotions and
imagination. The romantics emphasized the importance of the “universe within” each individual (4 ). In
England, poets were the main proponents of romanticism: William Blake was the precursor, and later generations included William Wordsworth and Samuel
Taylor Coleridge, and Percy Bysshe Shelley, John
Keats, and Lord Byron (5 ). They maintained the concept of “the sublime,” which was regarded as different
from beauty: It was nature that incited fear and awe. In
landscape painting, untamed nature became a focus, as
opposed to the ordered and proscribed world of the
neoclassicists. In Germany, this new trend was epitomized by the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich
(1774 –1840), a contemporary of Turner.
Turner started to paint in a very disciplined way.
He trained in architectural drawing and for a time
studied under the topographical draftsman Thomas
Malton (6 ). In 1793, at the age of 18, Turner won the
Greater Silver Pallet in a competition for drawing landscape run by the Society of Arts (7 ). Turner himself
College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences, University of Glasgow, Glasgow,
UK.
* Address correspondence to the author at: Department of Biochemistry, Gartnavel General Hospital, Glasgow G12 0YN, UK. Fax ⫹44-141-211-3452; e-mail
[email protected].
800 Clinical Chemistry 58:4 (2012)
dabbled in architecture (1, 8 ). For instance, in 1804 he
designed a gallery for his house on Queen Anne Street.
Although his training at the Royal Academy School did
include figure painting, throughout his life Turner remained attracted to landscape and architectural images. He was not inclined toward portraiture, except
for painting working people as parts of his scenes in
landscape. He delighted in painting wild nature, particularly the sea. In his paintings of fire and water, the
force of nature—sometimes catastrophic—is rendered
through the use of color and light. His revolutionary
style was heavily criticized for producing “unfinished”
works (incidentally, the same criticism was later directed at the impressionists). He used the same approach in his “industrial” images of forges and foundries. After 1800, Turner applied his landscapist skills to
paint historical scenes; and he was influenced by the
17th-century painters Nicolas Poussin (1594 –1665),
and Claude Lorrain (1604/5–1682)— both of whom he
particularly admired. He thus wisely merged a revolutionary painting style with then highly regarded “historical” stories. This approach gained him recognition
and patronage despite the nonconformity of his style.
Turner’s work in a fascinating way synthesizes the
romantic approach with technically informed architectural drawing and includes a wide range of “technological” themes. For instance, his famous painting The
Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last Berth to be broken
up, created in 1838, is a synthesis of marine painting
with the allegory of technological transition from sail
to steam (9 ). Turner created many works in oil, but his
favorite medium was watercolor. He also worked with
printers and engravers.
Turner’s landscape painting was informed by his
extensive travels in England and Europe. For a time he
lived close to Oxford. He also went to Margate on the
coast in the 1780s, visited Scotland in 1801, and in 1802
traveled to Italy, France, and Switzerland (1, 2, 5, 7 ).
For most of his professional career, Turner was associated with the Royal Academy. He was Professor of Perspective there from 1807 (2 ). Apparently he was a terrible lecturer. His audiences could hardly make out
what he was saying (1 ); however, the visual aspects of
his lectures were flawless: For these lectures he prepared about 200 original drawings.
Rain, Steam, and Speed - The Great Western Railway (Fig. 1) was exhibited in 1844. The picture repre-
Science in the Arts
Fig. 1. J.M.W. Turner.
Rain, Steam, and Speed - The Great Western Railway, 1844. Oil on canvas, 91 ⫻ 121.8 cm. Turner Bequest. ©National Gallery,
London / Art Resource, NY. Reproduced with permission.
sents a train crossing the bridge over the River Thames
at Maidenhead in a driving rain (10, 11 ). Here Turner
combines the view of violent nature with a tribute to
technology (the railway) and to architectural achievement (the bridge). Note how he achieves the drama and
tension, not only through color and blur that depicts
speed but also through the diagonals of the rain streams
and the bridge. It is significant that the depicted railway
line, from London to Bristol, was a major achievement
in contemporary engineering. It was built by Isambard
Kingdom Brunel (1806 –1859) between 1836 and 1841
(12 ). The bridge, it was said, had the largest and flattest
arch ever constructed in brick and was heavily criticized as a precarious structure. Through this painting,
Turner celebrates Brunel’s success (11 ).
Turner’s name is very much alive on today’s arts
scene. He bequeathed his works to the nation. Over 200
years later, in 1987, the Clore Gallery was opened at
Tate Britain in London to house most of these paintings (13 ). Just recently, in 2011, a new museum,
Turner Contemporary, opened in Margate to celebrate
Turner’s association with this town (14 ). The Turner
Prize, established in 1984 and awarded annually, re-
mains the most prestigious award for a contemporary
artist in Britain (15 ).
Author Contributions: All authors confirmed they have contributed to
the intellectual content of this paper and have met the following 3 requirements: (a) significant contributions to the conception and design,
acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; (b) drafting
or revising the article for intellectual content; and (c) final approval of
the published article.
Authors’ Disclosures or Potential Conflicts of Interest: No authors
declared any potential conflicts of interest.
Acknowledgment: The author thanks Jacky Gardiner for excellent
secretarial assistance.
References
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2. Tate Britain. Turner online: biography. http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/turner/
biography.htm (Accessed March 2012).
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p 12–20.
4. Goodman J. Pictures and publics. In: Kemp M, ed. Oxford history of Western
art. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2000. p 304 –39.
5. Cranston M. The romantic movement. Oxford: Blackwell; 1994. 169 p.
Clinical Chemistry 58:4 (2012) 801
Science in the Arts
6. Wikipedia. J. M. W. Turner. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._M._W._Turner
(Accessed March 2012).
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p 102–3.
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(Accessed March 2012).
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DOI: 10.1373/clinchem.2012.181966