I discovered Turner when I was in the 9th grade. His painting "Rain, Steam, and Speed" was on an album cover.
Both are still two of my favorites.

The painting, completed in 1844, depicts the Great Western Railway engine and open cars racing over the Maidenhead Bridge (designed by Isimbard Brunel, incidentally) across the Thames River.

Turner used soft colors and broad, rapid brushstrokes to convey the hazy English air. His painting style presaged the impressionists to come.

He used two diagonals, the bridge in the mist on the left, and the tracks on the right, to draw the eye to the only really discernable object on the entire canvass, the stack of the steam engine.

The painting depicts the juxtaposition of the new industrial age and the fading of the old farm age in England.
As the train is speeding towards the viewer, you can see (on a large, clear image. Sorry) on the left, between the bridges, a rowboat with fishermen, and on the right of the Maidenhead Bridge, a farmer with a two horse plow tilling the bottomland.

Turner knowingly used many pigments that were bright when used but faded with time. He painted for "now" and wasn't overly concerned with what would happen to the colors later.

JMW Turner was a prolific artist, turning out some 550 oils, 2000 watercolors, and about 30,000 paper pieces in his 76 years!

Here's "Rain, Steam, and Speed".

Attached Images

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