TURNER’S RETURN

A few weeks ago, a colleague of mine got me enthused about art and my recent trip to the National Gallery. She was clever: asking me all about which rooms I prefer, whether I liked the Impressionists or the Surrealists or the Old Masters, and so on. She herself studied the Italian Avant-Garde movement, and she certainly has an eye for design.

“Do you have any paintings you keep going back to see?” she asked, “any favourites?”

I told her at length about Renoir’s Umbrellas, about the little collection of Van Goghs, and The Haywain, and Holbein’s Ambassadors, oh and all the exquisite detail of Canaletto’s Venice.

“But I really like Turner,” I said. “I just love how paint can create an atmosphere.”

Doubtless that was Turner’s shtick. I reminded her of that scene in Skyfall where Bond and Q sit opposite The Fighting Temeraire (in a suspiciously quiet and unlikely gallery, nowhere near where the painting actually is) and discuss its symbolism over a briefcase containing a gun and a miniature radio. The painting shows an old warship, the Temeraire, being tugged home to the breakers’ yard, with its masts and wooden hull gleaming in the sunset, offset by the thick black trailing smoke a tug boat. It is emotive.

In real-life, next to the Temeraire is a painting called Rain, Steam and Speed. I’ve mentioned it before, I think. It’s classic JMW Turner - a train hurtles over a river bridge in the pouring rain - though you only just get the glimpse that that’s what’s happening, as the whole thing is painted with layers and layers of impressionist feeling, atmosphere, and mood. Turner was masterful at story-telling with the technique. I went on about it a lot.

-

So today, it transpired that my colleagues had bought me a gift for my birthday - a mug with Rain, Steam and Speed printed onto it. I love it! Another one for the collection of awesome mugs!

The steam train hurtles out of the mist: new, exciting, and quick, over the old, slow world of boats and rivers and bridges. A hare darts from the track, astonished at the blistering fire-lit carriages, and the rattling engine that pulls them by, a symbol of the Future, the shining Twentieth Century, the New Age of speed and technology and progress.

There are metaphors a-plenty.

Well I like it. And I particularly like that I had no idea what my friend was up to that day. You know work can be a bit dreary sometimes, but every now and then you catch a glimpse of hope at what might be coming, and the lovely people who are muddling through with you. It’s nice when that happens. Isn’t it?