In a time when horses were the fastest mode of transit, the railroad was as radical as Turner’s abstraction.
Joseph Mallord William Turner, Rain, Steam, and Speed — The Great Western Railway, oil on canvas, 1844 (National Gallery, London)
Rain, Steam, and Speed — The Great Western Railway was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1844. It depicts the Maidenhead Railway Bridge (completed 1838) looking east, across the River Thames between Taplow and Maidenhead.