Art in the Age of Steam1 at the Walker Gallery in Liverpool offered an appealing selection of artistic responses to the subject of railways. The title, amended for the purposes of the catalog to The Railway: Art in the Age of Steam,2 hinted at the exhibition’s content—the subject of steam travel since its inception in 1804 as perceived by a chronology of art historical movements. The exhibition brought together a variety of works, some included for the skill and fame of their creators and some elevated to gallery status because their subjects matched the exhibition’s theme. The dual appeal of the show—of interest to historians of technology and art historians alike— drew massive audiences, and it raised some interesting issues regarding exhibition content and selection, namely: the manner in which conservation challenges can be creatively solved; the compromises involved in assembling an international touring exhibition;3 the complexities of presenting aspects of an industrialized and globalized society through painted depictions; and the challenges associated with portraying a subject spanning two centuries in a concise narrative framework. These dichotomies led to an exhibition that offered a variety of thought-provoking insights into the steam age and explored the positive and negative aspects of railroads as symbols of modernity (fig. 1).

Fig. 1 The entry to the exhibition. (National Museums Liverpool, reproduced with permission.)

The introduction responded to some of these challenges with gusto. J. M. W. Turner’s Rain, Steam and Speed—the Great Western Railway (1844), arguably the most powerful contemporary depiction of the early steam era, was deemed too fragile to travel to Liverpool for the show. The curatorial team creatively solved this problem by positioning a flat-screen television with a live link to the painting displayed in the National Gallery, London, adjacent to the introductory text. This set the tone for the show by immediately and eloquently stating the perceived value of railway art as comparable to other masterpieces. It also allowed visitors to see London audiences simultaneously viewing the painting, as well as permitting selection and magnification of detail in support of the interpretation. This novel approach, I am sure, will be replicated in many exhibitions to come.

As hinted above, both the “art” and “steam” in the exhibition’s title proved slightly nebulous. The exhibition was restricted to the subject of railways, and “art” was defined predominantly as painting, with some drawings, photographs, poems, and film clips in support. In contrast, the accompanying catalog—more accurately described as an “associated publication”—offered several literary perspectives on the subject.4 The gallery showcased 117 oils, works on paper, and photographs arranged into six sections. These were complemented by individual object labels and large-scale quotes offering a mix of railway chronology and art-historical context. Though interpreting the subject in two dimensions was problematic for those acquainted with the multisensory experience of railway journeys, the atmospheric qualities of steam-powered travel were at times beautifully evoked by the works of artists such as Claude Monet. The inclusion of popular and documentary film added significantly to the theme’s interpretation, however, the lack of sculpture was disappointing.5

One of the exhibition’s major strengths was the quality and diversity of artwork on display. As mentioned in the catalog introduction, the exhibition aimed to “show the response of the best artists to the railways” and was self-consciously created with Liverpool’s “Capital of Culture” status in mind.6 Appropriately, Liverpool has a significant place in railway history as one of the sites on the route of Britain’s earliest public railway, the Liverpool and Manchester, which opened in 1830. The curators succeeded in their mission to juxtapose the work of the most celebrated nineteenth- and twentieth-century artists, including Vincent van Gogh, Honoré Daumier, Edouard Manet, Wassily Kandinsky, and Giorgio de Chirico. It was almost as though the perceived value of railways as icons of modernity was cemented by the fact that celebrated artists chose to record them. The argument underpinning the exhibition (though weakened by the lack of sculpture and social-historical material) was that railways pervaded the mindset of all who encountered them. As the exhibition proved, railways became the settings for films and poems and the focus of artistic analyses symbolizing progress, innovation, and technological artistry.

The broadly chronological layout of the show (which supported the thematic headings) suited the subject matter perfectly. One could easily trace the fads of railway depiction and note that the increased production of such images coincided with growing public acceptance of the new technology. In the first grouping, “The Formative Years in Europe,” the selection showed, through documentary prints and photography, the manner in which railways were gradually normalized and began to make subtle appearances in landscape painting. Nineteenth-century art critics’ bias for history painting is well known, and even the progressive Turner was emulating the great Romantic artist Claude Lorrain in works like Dido Building Carthage in 1815. When railways as a subject were deemed acceptable fodder for artistic analysis, they still had to fit into well-established art-historical canons. Gradually it became acceptable to view railways as emblematic of the perils of a modern age, as in John Martin’s 1853 The Last Judgement7 where locomotive carriages bearing the names of the world’s cities crash into an abyss. David Cox’s 1849 The Night Train depicts a locomotive in a painting ostensibly dealing with the subject of modernity, showing horses, the traditional mode of transportation, racing away from the approaching engine under a leaden sky.

The next section, “The Human Drama of the Railway,” explored the manner in which railway subjects—specifically, railway stations and journeys—fitted into the Victorian vogue for genre painting. William Frith’s monumental 1862 The Railway Station was exhibited alongside Abraham Solomon’s alternative views of first- and second-class travel. The curators took pains to show the manner in which these artists respected the conventions of their day. Frith employed a trained architect, William Scott Morton, to paint the elegant architectural ironwork of Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s Paddington Station. Solomon altered his original composition for First Class: The Meeting . . . and at First Meeting Loved (first version, 1854, second version, 1855) so that the second version showed the lady and her potential suitor separated by an alert minder (the first version controversially pandered to contemporary fears of lewd behavior on the railways by showing the young lady’s guardian asleep and unaware of his charge’s actions). Both Frith and Morton focused on issues of class and portrayed the stereotypes of Victorian Britain.

Curiously, the controversial Victorian topic of the public’s right to rail travel was not explored in any depth. The UK railway companies—most established predominantly for financial gain—made significantly more money from freight than from passenger services. Numerous parliamentary acts were required to ensure safety standards, and it was not until the 1844 Railway Act that British companies were legally obliged to provide a minimum of one return journey per day and to offer a service priced at 1d. per mile or less to third-class passengers.

The rapidly spreading railways of Victorian Britain also dramatically altered both the landscape and the urban environment. For a country approximately 600 miles in length, Britain amassed an astonishing 18,000 miles of railways. Architects and engineers built vast, classically inspired viaducts and Gothic railway stations, and whole cities were engulfed by these developments. When St. Pancras Station was constructed in London in 1866, for example, approximately 4,000 houses were demolished. It is therefore somewhat surprising that most contemporary paintings of this period focused on human interaction in a railway setting.

“Crossing Continents: America and Beyond” contrasted sharply with contemporary British depictions of railways in art. Unlike Frith and Solomon’s responses to the subject, George Inness’s 1857 The Delaware Water Gap and Theodore Kaufmann’s 1867 Westward the Star of Empire suggest the cultural and political tensions that resulted from the development of the American railways. Andrew Russell’s famous photograph of “East and West Shaking Hands at Laying of Last Rail,” taken in 1869, hints at the vast number of people whose lives were changed by the rapid spread of the railways. The calculated use of scale in both paintings and photographs was well-presented. In the majority of the American oils, the locomotive is portrayed as a miniscule dot on the landscape, emphasizing man’s ingenuity at crossing vast distances and difficult terrain. The newer medium of photography was more frequently used to emphasize the details of the new technology. William Henry Jackson’s albumen print “Old Aqueduct Querétaro, Mexico,” around 1886, powerfully contrasted a classically designed aqueduct straddling a stationary locomotive (fig. 2).

Fig. 2 Works displayed in “Crossing Continents: America and Beyond.” (National Museums Liverpool, reproduced with permission.)

Predictably, one of the most coherent and tantalizing sections was the “Impressionism and Post-Impressionist” group. With the aim of depicting the transient effects of light, this movement was perhaps best placed to successfully evoke the multisensory experience of the railways. Manet’s The Railway (The Gare Saint-Lazare) of 1873, which graces the first edition of the catalog’s cover, cannot fail to impress as a captivating vision of the nineteenth century. Another highlight was van Gogh’s 1888 La Crau from Montmajour, with Train, in which the railway seamlessly fits into the heavily stylized landscape, creating a sense of inevitability and belonging. These works contrasted dramatically with the “States of Mind” section on the opposing wall 8 which contained images laden with psychological symbolism. De Chirico’s The Anxious Journey of 1913 presents a nightmarish vision of multiple dimly lit arches with a locomotive in steam on the top lefthand corner; this was juxtaposed with Gino Severini’s 1915 chaotic Suburban Train Arriving in Paris (fig. 3).

Fig. 3 The “States of Mind” section. (National Museums Liverpool, reproduced with permission.)

Further examples of sinister railway symbolism appeared in the “Machine Age” section. Alvin Langdon Coburn’s photograph “St. Paul’s from Ludgate Circus,” about 1905, shows London engulfed by smog, and Bill Brandt’s photograph of Halifax in 1937 hints at the unsettling and alienating effects of mechanization. In contrast, Ivo Pannaggi’s 1922 Speeding Train presents a colorful and celebratory vision of a streamlined, high-speed age. Only a handful of works in the gallery examined the impact of locomotives in war. In the color woodcut triptych from Telegraphed Reports of the Russo-Japanese War, March 1904, Kokunimasa (Ryua) contrasted Russia and Japan’s military and technical prowess, while Konstantin Savitsky’s work depicted the crowded and emotive scene on a troop train destined for the Russo-Turkish war. The published catalog explores this theme in greater depth through references to the impact of the American Civil War and World War II, including Elliot Erwitt’s stark 1964 image “Auschwitz—Entrance to Concentration Camp, Poland” (fig. 4).

Though the exhibition offered an array of images commissioned by railway companies, such as Albert Bierstadt’s monumental Donner Lake from the Summit (1873) (painted while on a tour sponsored by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad) and Russell’s 1865–69 photographic series (completed while acting as the official photographer for the Union Pacific), the works displayed were mainly intended for private consumption.9 Given the image-conscious nature of the railway companies, which utilized all the skills associated with modern corporate-brand creation, the subject merited further exploration. Marketing and brand-awareness are some of the most fascinating legacies of private rail development, with a wealth of artists supported by the industry. Indeed, many travelers encountered art on the railways through carriage prints and public advertising campaigns.10

Fig. 4 The “Machine Age” section. (National Museums Liverpool, reproduced with permission.)

The subject of railways as symbols of a romantic era merited only a passing reference. Terence Cuneo’s 1967 painting The Great Marquess testifies to the emergence of a nostalgia for steam-powered engines at the dawn of the diesel-electric age. American photographer O. Winston Link’s artfully manipulated 1956 gelatin silver print, “Hot Shot Eastbound, Iaeger, West Virginia,” depicts an archaic-looking freight train passing a busy drive-in cinema with a jet on the screen.

Though this review has focused on the exhibition’s content, there were some novel design elements that warrant mention. The show could be reached by following a railway track composed of strips of tape that ran from the museum’s entrance through the Victorian galleries and on to the entrance of Art in the Age of Steam (see fig. 1). Free activity sheets were available for younger visitors, and a dressing-up section was included for even broader appeal.

This exhibition drew together important international works of art that demonstrated the public acceptance and global impact of the steam age. It successfully charted the normalization of the new technology and illustrated the manner in which railways infiltrated old and new media. Though the political and economic consequences of increased rail travel and the technological innovation that enabled it seem to have been neglected by contemporary artists in favor of the geographical and emotional impact, the exhibition proved that artistic interpretations of the subject matter helped to popularize steam travel. This topic merits further exploration.

1. Curated by Julian Treuherz of National Museums Liverpool and Ian Kennedy of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the exhibition was held at the Walker Art Gallery, National Museums Liverpool, from 18 April to 10 August 2008 and at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, from 13 September 2008 to 18 January 2009. See http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/walker/exhibitions/steam/ (accessed 16 January 2009) and http://www.nelson-atkins.org/art/Exhibitions/AgeSteam/index.cfm (accessed 16 January 2009).

2. Ian Kennedy and Julian Treuherz, eds., The Railway: Art in the Age of Steam (New Haven, Conn., 2008).

3. Many of the works could not accompany the exhibition to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, and these discrepancies are noted in the checklist at the back of the exhibition catalog.

4. The essays include the work of Charles Dickens and Émile Zola, with a passing reference to the late quondam poet laureate and passionate railway advocate John Betjeman.

5. Particularly when one thinks of the variety of railway-inspired works from Francis Chantrey’s (1781–1841) monumental classical depictions of the fathers of the industrial era (his marble sculpture of James Watt currently embellishes the atrium of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery), and of George Wyllie’s (b. 1921) innovative straw locomotive sculpture. Wyllie’s 1988 work was a full-scale engine composed of straw clad to a wire frame and suspended from the Finnieston Crane in Glasgow. It represented the millions of locomotives exported from Glasgow and lowered onto vessels by the iconic crane. In recognition of the Scottish locomotive industry’s collapse, the sculpture was later symbolically set alight.

6. The introduction was co-written by David Fleming of National Museums Liverpool and Marc F. Wilson, the Menefee D. and Mary Louise Blackwell Director/CEO of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.

7. This work appeared only in the catalog; it was not displayed in the exhibition.

8. These sections were separated by a false wall and could not be compared and contrasted directly.

9. Four contrasting posters were displayed from France and Russia, 1927–32.

10. A subject which has been explored in depth by railway art consultant Beverley Cole; see, e.g., Beverley Cole, Happy as a Sand Boy: Early Railway Posters (London, 1990), and Beverley Cole and Richard Durack, Railway Posters, 1923–1947: From the Collection of the National Railway Museum, York (London, 1992).

Rowan Brown is the senior curator of technology at National Museums Scotland and the president of the Scottish Museums Federation. Her research currently focuses on the history of energy production in Scotland.

Copyright© 2009, the Society for the History of Technology

Filed under: Vol. 50 No. 2 (April 2009)