Charging into The Modern Turner's Rain, Steam and Speed

Turner has out-prodiged almost all former prodigies. He has made a picture with real rain, behind which is real sunshine, and you expect a rainbow every minute. Meanwhile, there comes a train down upon you, really moving at the rate of fifty miles a hour, and which the reader had best make haste to see, lest it should dash out of the picture....as for the manner in which ‘Speed’ is done, of that the …showed first 75 words of 3603 total…

…showed last 75 words of 3603 total…was social Darwinism a nation had to become a ‘progressive, civilizing force’ in order to justify its imperialist/capitalist endeavors (enacted against a ‘less civilized’ anachronistic other — at home and abroad), as well as stave off colonization by a more progressive adversary. Thus, even though this painting embodies, on one level, the contemporary anxieties about new technology, it also participates in a larger discourse about progress, capitalism, colonialism and ultimately the condition of modernity itself.