Turner made his first trip abroad in 1802. He made a sketch of the cross-Channel ferry (or ‘packet’) arriving at the French port of Calais, and wrote: ‘Our landing at Calais. Nearly swampt.’ This painting certainly captures the drama of a rough crossing.

The boat in the middle, whose sail catches the light, is a French fishing boat, and the English packet is behind it, crammed with passengers. The threatening sky is brightened by a patch of blue, and a thin line of sunlight on the horizon suggests that the wind will shortly blow away these particular storm clouds.The dark sea is also lightened by the white foam on the waves crashing into the foreground. The people in the picture seem entirely at the mercy of this violent weather. Seasick fishermen slump on the pier, and boatmen gesture wildly as they try to negotiate the tricky landing.

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851)

Even as a child Turner was a talented artist. He exhibited at the Royal Academy from the age of 15, and became the youngest-ever Academician in 1802. He travelled in Britain and Europe, looking for dramatic views, and is especially well known for his colourful landscapes and seascapes. Many of these were quite different from paintings of similar subjects by his contemporaries, and he was seen as a daring modern artist in his lifetime. He left his paintings to the nation, and a large number of them are in the Tate Gallery in London.

Title: An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump
Artist: Wright
Medium: oil on canvas
Date: 1768

In a domestic setting, a lecturer is demonstrating the creation of a vacuum to a group of people. A white cockatoo has been placed in a glass bowl from which air has been pumped out. Unless the lecturer allows air back in, the bird will die. The scene is lit by light from a candle which is hidden behind a large glass. In the glass is something that looks like a decayed human skull. The group is a mixture of male and female, young and old, and each person responds differently to the event: the young girls in horror and distress, the boy on the extreme left with passionate interest, and the old man with deep thoughts. It is not so easy to decide how the couple at the top left are reacting. Wright may have used as models Mr and Mrs Coltman, a couple whose portrait he was to paint later. Are they looking at each other, with no interest in the drama around them? Or is she gazing into his eyes, while he looks past her at the bird? Wright leaves open the question of the cockatoo’s fate. Will it die from lack of air, or will the lecturer let air back into the glass and allow it to live? The boy at the back on the right pulls a cord attached to the bird’s cage: is this to lower it, so that he can replace the revived bird, or to raise it because it is no longer needed?

Wright had a great interest in science, but he was also clearly fascinated by the dramatic possibilities of this scene. The candlelight, the mixed reactions of the people in room and the theatrical character of the lecturer all help to create the drama.

Although this cannot be described as a scene from everyday life, it can certainly tell us something about the wide public interest in science in the eighteenth century.

Joseph Wright ‘of Derby’ (1734–97)

Wright studied in London but worked as a professional painter mainly in and around his native town of Derby. From early on he was interested in the effects of light, and became especially famous for a series of ‘candlelight’ pictures, of which An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump is one. He was equally well known for his view of Mount Vesuvius erupting, which he painted as a result of his travels in Italy. His main income came from portraits, but he also painted literary subjects and landscapes.

Title: A Winter Scene With Skaters Near a Castle
Artist: Avercamp
Medium: oil on wood
Date: c. 1608/9

Avercamp has painted an imaginary castle in an imaginary setting. But the costume, buildings and activities in the picture can give us some idea of what life was like in the Low Countries in the seventeenth century. In the early 1600s there was a series of severe winters. Rivers and canals froze and boats were trapped in the ice. In the picture, people of different social classes are using the ice for work and play: wealthy people wear fashionable black, while the poor have fewer layers of clothes; some ferry the rich across the ice in horse-drawn sledges.

Hendrick Avercamp (1585–1684)

Avercamp trained in Amsterdam, but settled in the small town of Kampen. He was known as ‘the Mute of Kampen’, perhaps because he was deaf and dumb. Since the thirteenth century, people in the Low Countries had been reclaiming land from the sea; so landscapes with water had a particular meaning for them. Avercamp set the fashion for paintings recording amusing everyday incidents in winter on the frozen canals and rivers.

Title: Bathers at Asničres
Artist: Seurat
Medium: oil on canvas
Date: 1884

Asničres was an industrial district on the river Seine just outside Paris, and there were several large factories there. When Seurat sent this picture to be shown at an exhibition known as the Salon in Paris, it was rejected. The organisers of the exhibition thought that ordinary modern people and buildings such as factories were not suitable subjects for such a large painting; they were more used to paintings of this size showing Bibical or historical scenes.

This was Seurat’s first large painting and he was only 25 when he made it. He made 20 small sketches in preparation. Some of these he made in oil paint on the riverbank at Asničres, and in his studio he made sketches of the figures.

From their clothes the figures seem to be ordinary people. They do not communicate with each other; and Seurat has painted them all in profile, so we cannot read their expressions. Near the far bank, two well-dressed people are being taken across the river in a green ferry with a French flag. There is only one woman in the picture, and she holds a parasol, perhaps as much to hide the view of the half-naked men as to protect herself from the sun.

In front of the factories, a steam train crosses a railway bridge. By the time this picture was painted in the 1880s the railways were well established in France, and were used to transport people as well as goods produced in factories such as the ones in the picture.

Georges-Pierre Seurat (1859–91)

Seurat was born in Paris and spent most of his short life there. He is best known for having developed the technique of painting known as pointillism. He used small dots of colour which, viewed from a certain distance, appear to blend together. However, Bathers at Asničres is not really a pointillist picture; it was painted before Seurat started experimenting with this technique.