Keelmen Heaving in Coals by Moonlight  1835

Here Turner brings the great force of his romantic genius to a common scene of working–class men at hard labor. Although the subject of the painting is rooted in the grim realities of the industrial revolution, in Turner's hands it transcends the specifics of time and place and becomes an image of startling visual poetry. [br] An almost palpable flood of moonlight breaks ...