Art in the Age of Steam
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

“Away with a shriek, and a roar, and a rattle,” runs Dickens’ enthralled/horrified description of a journey along “the track of the remorseless monster, Death!” in Dombey and Son in 1846. A decade earlier, the world’s first passenger steam train went into service between Liverpool and Manchester, travelling at 17 miles per hour. It achieved instant popularity in spite of a launch in which Liverpool’s member of parliament, William Huskisson, alighted to talk to the prime minister through his carriage window, lingered on the track, misjudged the speed of the approaching “Rocket”, and was run over and killed.

Very quickly the railway entered painting, too, in terms at once demonic and full of awe and wonder. Turner’s “Rain, Steam and Speed – the Great Western Railway” represents steam power as a mysterious force of nature, overwhelming geography and the weather with two elemental ingredients – water and fire – embodied in the rainstorm and the fiery glow of the locomotive’s headlamp.