TURNER’S LIGHT. I had looked at many of Turner’s paintings with their effects of atmosphere and color without realizing that Turner’s work was shaped by the English air. Turner was born in 1775 and all during his lifetime, houses were, as Davies puts it, “heated by cheap coal brought by sea from the easily accessible seams near Newcastle”. Turner’s light can be seen in the painting of “Keelmen Heaving in Coals by Moonlight, 1833” seen in Davies’ article or, for example, in this wikipedia image attached to the wikipedia entry on Turner’s “The Fighting Temeraire”.
Interestingly, Monet was also enchanted by the effects of the London fog. Davies writes: “When Monet, brought up in the misty estuary of the Seine, came to London, he was irresistibly drawn to the smoke-shrouded Thames where dirt shaped the light…. He declared that ‘without the fog, London wouldn’t be a beautiful city….'”