Artist field note

J.M.W. Turner

Light makes the solid world unstable.

Appears inUnited Kingdom

01 / 05

Dido building Carthage

1815

Architecture rises on either side of a luminous waterway. Even in a scene of imperial ambition, light directs the eye more insistently than the monuments.

The five in one idea

Turner used light and weather to unsettle the apparent solidity of ships, cities and machines, making landscape carry history as well as sensation.