The fog that swallowed the world: How turner painted the invisible

This old man was Joseph Mallord William Turner, and that canvas would become Snow Storm – Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth. Today, it hangs in Tate Britain as one of the first "abstract" paintings in art history. Yet Turner never sought to paint anything but reality—or rather, a reality truer than nature itself: the reality of emotions, of atmospheres, of the invisible forces that govern the world. In trying to capture the essence of a sunset or the shudder of a shipwreck, he accidentally invented a new way of seeing—and of painting.

01When light becomes matter

If you step close to Light and Colour (Goethe’s Theory) – The Morning After the Deluge, you’ll notice something strange. From a distance, the painting appears to depict a biblical landscape bathed in golden light. But up close, nothing is recognizable. Swirls of yellow, orange, and red intertwine like molten lava. Turner used a revolutionary technique for the time: alla prima painting, applied directly to the canvas without preparatory drawing, layering wet paint to create translucent effects.

What fascinates in this work is how light is treated not as mere illumination, but as a substance in its own right. Turner doesn’t just paint what light reveals—he paints light itself. His brushstrokes become particles of brightness, as if the canvas were made of gold dust and sunbeams. This approach eerily foreshadows the Impressionists’ experiments thirty years later, as they too tried to capture the fleeting effects of light.

But Turner goes further. Where Monet and Renoir still sought to represent recognizable scenes, he, in his later works, seems to abandon all reference to reality. His landscapes become fields of force, visual equations where only the relationships between colors matter. In this, he anticipates the lyrical abstraction of Rothko or Pollock, for whom painting was no longer a window onto the world, but an autonomous language.

02The day Turner had himself tied to a mast

To understand how Turner came to paint this way, we must revisit a little-known episode in his life. In 1842, as he neared seventy, he boarded a ship bound for Harwich. The weather was rough, and soon a storm erupted. Instead of taking shelter in his cabin like most passengers, Turner asked the crew to lash him to the mast. For four hours, through driving rain and violent winds, he stood there, eyes wide open, watching the raging sea.

This extreme experience gave birth to Snow Storm – Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth, one of his most radical works. The painting doesn’t represent a storm—it is a storm. Forms are barely suggested, drowned in a whirl of white, gray, and blue. A ship’s silhouette is barely discernible, as if sea and sky had merged into a single chaotic entity. What strikes is the total absence of a horizon line. Turner doesn’t paint a landscape, but a sensation: that of vertigo, of crushing weight, of man’s insignificance before the elements.

The canvas shocked contemporary critics. Some saw proof that Turner had gone senile. Others thought it a prank. Yet today, it’s considered one of his most visionary works. By refusing to provide clear visual landmarks, Turner forces the viewer to feel rather than see. It’s no longer about recognizing a scene, but about being swept away by pure emotion. In this, he invents a new form of art, where painting becomes a physical experience as much as an aesthetic one.

03The train that changed art

In 1844, Turner exhibited a painting at the Royal Academy that would mark a turning point in his career: Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway. The subject? A train crossing a bridge in driving rain. Nothing very original, one might think. Yet this painting is far more than a simple depiction of an industrial landscape.

First, there’s the bold composition. The train hurtles toward the viewer, as if about to burst from the canvas. Turner uses dynamic diagonals to create a sense of motion, almost cinematic. Then there’s the way he treats steam and rain as nearly abstract elements. The forms are blurred, as if the painting were seen through a veil of water. Finally, there’s the surprising color palette: vivid yellows for the locomotive, cool blues for the sky, and everywhere, this impression of speed and modernity.

But what makes the painting truly revolutionary is what it reveals of Turner’s vision. For him, the train wasn’t just a symbol of technical progress—it was a metaphor for painting itself. Like the train, painting must move forward, evolve, free itself from the constraints of the past. By depicting this modern subject with new techniques, Turner showed that art could—and should—reflect its time.

And then there’s that fascinating detail, discovered only in 1960 during restoration: a tiny hare, hidden in the bottom left corner of the canvas. Some see it as a metaphor for nature fleeing progress. Others interpret it as Turner’s secret signature, as he loved to hide elements in his works. Whatever the case, the hare adds a poetic dimension to a scene that, without it, might seem purely descriptive.

04The studio where paint flowed like water

If you had stepped into Turner’s studio on Queen Anne Street, you would have found a place both fascinating and chaotic. Unfinished canvases leaned against the walls, pots of paint lay scattered everywhere, and the air was thick with the scent of linseed oil and turpentine. Turner often worked standing, before a tilted easel, as if rushing to capture an idea before it slipped away.

What struck most about him was his way of painting. Unlike most artists of his time, who began with precise drawings before applying color, Turner worked directly with paint, without preparatory sketches. He used wide brushes and thick bristles, applying color in quick, gestural strokes. Sometimes he rubbed the canvas with a cloth to soften the edges. Other times, he scraped the paint with a knife to create texture.

But his most revolutionary technique was undoubtedly wet-on-wet painting. Instead of waiting for each layer to dry before adding another, Turner layered colors while they were still fresh. This allowed him to create translucent, blurred effects, as in The Fighting Temeraire, where light seems to pass through clouds like stained glass.

This way of working was both intuitive and experimental. Turner didn’t follow strict rules—he invented his own method as he went. He sometimes used unusual tools, like sponges or even his fingers, to spread the paint. He also mixed experimental mediums, like beeswax or gum arabic, to achieve particular effects.

This libertarian approach to painting shocked the academicians of his time, who saw it as a lack of rigor. Yet it was precisely this freedom that allowed Turner to innovate so much. By refusing to conform to conventions, he opened the door to new expressive possibilities, later explored by the Impressionists, Expressionists, and even abstract artists.

05The testament of a painter who refused to die

Turner’s final years were marked by an artistic output as intense as it was radical. As his health declined, he continued to paint with surprising energy, as if sensing time was running out. His works from this period are among the boldest of his career: landscapes nearly abstract, where forms dissolve into light, where colors explode like fireworks.

Among these, Light and Colour (Goethe’s Theory) holds a special place. Inspired by the German poet and scientist’s theories on color perception, Turner explores the relationships between hues in an almost scientific manner. The painting is constructed like a visual equation, where each color responds to another according to precise laws. Yet despite this apparent rigor, the work conveys a sense of spontaneity and pure emotion.

What strikes in these late canvases is their modernity. At a time when most artists still sought to represent the world realistically, Turner had already taken a step further. His landscapes were no longer windows onto nature, but autonomous spaces where painting existed for its own sake. In this, he anticipated by decades the experiments of 20th-century abstract artists.

When Turner died in 1851, he left behind a vast and revolutionary body of work. But he also left an unanswered question: how could an artist who spent his life painting landscapes have, unwittingly, invented abstraction? The answer, perhaps, lies in a phrase he loved to repeat: "I never sought to paint what I saw, but what I felt."

06The legacy of a painter who saw the future

Today, more than a century and a half after his death, Turner’s influence is everywhere. We see it in Monet’s vibrant canvases, in Rothko’s fields of color, in Pollock’s free gestures. But his legacy extends beyond art history. Turner also changed the way we see the world.

By refusing to settle for representing reality as it appears, he showed that art could go further: that it could reveal invisible truths, hidden emotions, secret forces. In doing so, he paved the way for a new kind of painting, where what matters is no longer what we see, but what we feel.

And then there’s this fascinating idea: Turner invented abstraction without knowing it. He never set out to create non-figurative art—he simply wanted to capture the essence of things. Yet by pushing painting to its limits, he accidentally created something new. As if, in trying to paint the world, he had ultimately painted the invisible.

Today, when you look at Rain, Steam and Speed or Snow Storm – Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth, you don’t just see landscapes. You see the future of art. You see the birth of a new way of thinking about painting. And above all, you see the genius of a man who, without meaning to, changed the course of history.