Rotterdam Ferry-Boat

Rotterdam Ferry-Boat, painted by Joseph Mallord William Turner in 1833, shows a crowded ferry pushing away from the Dutch port beneath a sky of towering cloud, the sails of the shipping and the towers of the city dissolving into haze and glittering water. Turner, who had first made his name with Dutch-style sea pieces, here returns to the subject that launched him, but transformed: where his early marines recorded shipping with topographical care, this later canvas is a drama of light and weather, in which the ferry’s passengers, the wet quay and the distant town are all caught in the same luminous wash. The picture’s breadth of handling and its sheer weather — the sun breaking through the massed cloud to turn the river to gold — mark the mature Turner, the painter who dissolved the solid world into atmosphere. The painting is held in the National Gallery of Art, Washington.