A marriage between Art and Industry: this was the hope of Victorian Enlightenment. But it never came to pass. Artist in general found the Industrial Revolution wholly repulsive, and industrialists, for the most part, found only the picturesqueness of the past appealing. neither searched for beauty in the new Age of Steam. Turner was an exception. He admired modernity. "Rain, Steam, and Speed" states emphatically tha a railroad train crossing a bridge is beautiful. The engine he selected for his painting was the most advanced type of locomotive of the day, known as the "Friefly Class"; and the bridge it is crossing at Maidenhead was a masterpiece of engineering by the greatest bridge - builder of his time, Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Having journeyed all over England and Scotland and half of Europe in stagecoaches, Turner was among the first to welcome this speedier and more comfortable method of travel. He was particualarly delighted by the Great Western Railroad, which opened its Bristol-Exeter extension in 1844, the year "Rain, Steam and Speed" was exhibited. On one of his trips on this railway, during a driving rainstorm, the artist saw a train approaching from the opposite direction. Leaning out of his coach window, he mentally photographed the scene, but when he painted this picture he characteristically took many liberties. because he wished to have the oncoming train in the center of the bridge, he omitted the second track. He also wanted the black mass of the boiler broken up with light, presumably headlights. But the effect is that of a boiler being stoked, and thus the engine at first seems to be pushing, not pulling, its coaches. So that the spectator would know, however, that the train was moving forward rather than backward, Turner painted three puffs of steam, making the one nearest to the engine the most distinct, and the other two gradually less so. As a further indication of the direction of the train, he painted a hare running in front of the engine. Whether, as some have suggeste, this is a symbol of Nature about to be destoryed by Industry, or whether, as I am inclined to think, it is Turner's method of indicating how slowly the train really ran, I leave to the reader.
Thackeray, reviewing the 1844 Academy Exhibition, wrote of the printing: "As for Mr. Turner, he has out-prodigied all former prodigies ... The world has never seen anything like this picture." And up to the time of the Impressionists it is the solitary painting of significance glorifying the new age of railways.
