Prints and Drawings Room
View by appointment- Artist
- After Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
- Medium
- Engraving on paper
- Dimensions
- Image: 190 × 263 mm
support: 268 × 222 mm - Collection
- Tate
- Acquisition
- Transferred from the British Museum 1988
- Reference
- T06366
Display caption
Turner’s painting, reproduced in this engraving, seems to summarise modernity for Turner’s generation. A steam train speeds along a bridge (probably Maidenhead Bridge over the Thames) whilst a vortex of rain swirls around it. Ahead of the train runs a tiny hare, a traditional, natural emblem of speed.
However, the power and significance of this image seems to lie as much in its purely formal evocation of the speed and power
of modern life. Critics who saw the original painting were baffled, but also fascinated, by the artist’s treatment of such an up-to-date theme, especially his dramatic evocation of speed.
Gallery label, September 2004
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