The sky ignites with fiery reds and oranges as Vesuvius erupts, spewing lava and smoke into a stormy sky. The dark water below mirrors the blaze, a tiny boat battles the waves, adding urgency and dread to the scene. On the shore, tiny human figures highlight nature’s overwhelming scale. We’re taking in Vesuvius in Eruption (c. 1818-20), in which painter J. M. W. Turner’s command of color and atmosphere turns catastrophe into something sublime, luminous and strangely beautiful.
In the Romantic era, the philosophical concept of the sublime was often embodied in the overwhelming, awe-inspiring beauty or terror of nature—something Turner masterfully captured in many of his seascapes and stormy landscapes. His work still resonates, according to Lucinda Lax, curator at the Yale Center for British Art in Connecticut, who writes in the exhibition notes for “J. M. W. Turner: Romance and Reality” that the artist “revolutionized the genre of landscape painting in ways that continue to captivate contemporary audiences.”
The museum, home to the largest collection of British art outside the U.K., mounted the show for the 250th anniversary of the artist’s birth. Curated by Lax, it showcases his Vesuvius masterpiece alongside some of Turner’s most acclaimed oil paintings and his only complete sketchbook not held in the British Isles.
From precision to pure light
Born to a London barber and wigmaker, Turner entered the Royal Academy of Arts when he was just 14. His early works were marked by meticulous draftsmanship and architectural precision, but seeing the Dutch marine painters and the idealized visions of the 17th-century French classical landscapist Claude Lorrain pushed him toward a more expressive, almost abstract use of light and color.
Works like The Decline of the Carthaginian Empire (1817) demonstrated his growing detachment from rigid detail in favor of mood and emotion. By the 1820s, Turner had traded fine detail for feeling. Oil and watercolor blurred together as he layered pigments to evoke shimmering skies, storm-tossed seas and golden haze. Paint became energy: raw, emotional, almost abstract, as seen in works like The Burning of the Houses of Parliament (1834-35).
Turner and the machine age
While celebrated for his wild seas and luminous skies, Turner was equally captivated by machines, steam and industrial spectacle. Living through the Industrial Revolution, he turned his artistic attention to factories, locomotives and iron bridges.
“Essentially, Turner was born in the age of sail and died in the age of steam,” says art historian Barry Venning in the BBC-film The Genius of Turner: Painting the Industrial Revolution. He engaged with scientific minds like Michael Faraday, whose groundbreaking work in electromagnetism helped shape the artist’s visual language. In Snow Storm: Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth (1842), Turner translates invisible forces—motion, energy and magnetism—into a swirling, dynamic tableau.
While many Romantics recoiled from mechanization, Turner found a strange beauty in it. In his watercolor Dudley, Worcestershire (c. 1830-33), he depicts nocturnal laborers at work, set against the haunting backdrop of the Dudley Castle ruins. The painting is a collision of past and future, rendered without judgment but with a sense of fascination.
“He coaxes the most exquisite, beautiful pictorial effect out of the blast furnaces of industrial Dudley,” Venning continues. “But what Turner is representing, and not what [William] Blake described as the Dark Satanic Mills, is an image which certainly doesn’t criticize the industrial revolution in any way.”
By the 1840s, Turner had fully embraced modernity. In one of his most famous and striking paintings, Rain, Steam and Speed (1844), a train races across Brunel’s Great Western Railway, embodying Britain’s industrial transformation.
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Turner’s technique in Rain, Steam and Speed is a blend of pioneering color use, dynamic brushwork and atmospheric effects, all of which were revolutionary for the time. This approach foreshadowed Impressionism and modern abstraction and marked him as a visionary ahead of his era.
The modern resonance of Turner’s work
Turner’s bold use of light, color, and atmosphere continues to resonate with contemporary artists. Icelandic–Danish artist Olafur Eliasson, renowned for his immersive installations, draws directly from Turner’s elemental themes. In The Weather Project (2003), a glowing artificial sun filled Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, echoing Turner’s obsession with ephemeral light and atmospheric vastness.
Eliasson has said of Turner: “His ability to shape and frame light in his paintings has had a significant impact on my work… I’ve isolated light and color in Turner’s works to extract his sense of ephemera from the objects of desire his paintings have become.”
Turner’s influence now also reaches into the digital realm. At Rutgers University’s Art and A.I. Lab, researchers developed algorithms replicating his brushstrokes, paving the way for Creative Adversarial Networks. Today, A.I. tools and digital platforms bring his legendary style to life, extending his impact into new creative frontiers.
After 250 years, Turner’s work remains as timeless and relevant as ever. Amid climate upheaval and machine-driven creativity, his legacy endures, reminding us that transformation is ever possible and the sublime is still accessible.
“J. M. W. Turner: Romance and Reality” is at the Yale Center for British Art through July 27, 2025.