Rain, Steam and Speed
Rain, Steam and Speed — The Great Western Railway (J. M. W. Turner) — Rain, Steam and Speed — The Great Western Railway · J. M. W. Turner · 1844.
Unframed at this size — framing is available on 16×24 and 24×36.
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About this work
- Artist
- J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851)
- Year
- 1844
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Original size
- 91 × 121.8 cm
- Collection
- National Gallery, London
- Movement
- Romanticism
A locomotive charges toward the viewer across a bridge over the Thames through a veil of rain and steam, its black boiler the only hard shape in a haze of gold, grey and blue; a rowing boat drifts below, and a hare, barely visible, runs ahead of the engine on the track. The bridge is Brunel's Maidenhead Railway Bridge on the Great Western line. Turner painted it in 1844 and exhibited it at the Royal Academy that year, when he was sixty-nine. A fellow passenger later recalled him leaning out of a carriage window in a storm to study the effect. It is among the first serious paintings of a railway and the most radical of his late works, with the subject almost dissolved in weather. Turner bequeathed it to the nation; it is in the National Gallery.
This print reproduces the whole work, uncropped, from a high-resolution scan of the original. The original is in the public domain.
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About this design
The Madten promise
An exhibition poster
The same artwork as a gallery exhibition poster — title, artist & date typeset beneath the image on a soft ground.













