But the relationship between man and nature is much less clear-cut in this picture, called Rain, Steam and Speed——the Great Western Railway, completed by Turner sometime around 1843, 1844. 但人类与大自然的关系在《雨、蒸汽和速度——西部大铁路》中就没有那么清晰的表现出来。此画由透纳在1843年和1844年左右完成。

What we see is the Great Western Railway just completed, actually in 1839, built by the great engineer Brunel, linking London to Bristol and Exeter. 当时，也就是1839年，西部大铁路刚刚由伟大的工程师布鲁内尔建成，连接了伦敦、布里斯托尔和埃克塞特。 But what Turner does, is paint this locomotive, hurtling its way, straight out of the painting. 透纳画中的火车离弦的箭一般直冲出画面。

He also experiences the sensation of traveling at speed for the first time because he rides the locomotive and actually he sticks his head out of the window for ten minutes in order to get that sensation of a world passing. 因为乘坐了这列火车，他也第一次亲身经历了高速旅行的感觉，实际上，为了感受的飞驰而过的世界，他把头探出窗外足足有10分钟之久。

And that is brilliantly and effectively conveyed in this painting where air and light fuse together. 而这种感觉在这幅画中表现得淋漓尽致，空气和光线融为了一体。

The train coming straight out is also pursuing a hare. You can see in beautiful but tiny detail, a hare that when you look at it again you realize it’s far too big. 全速前进的火车正在追赶一只野兔。你能从画面上看到一个美丽而微小的细节，一只野兔。再看一眼，你就会发现它太大了。

And something I'll be with about this, what’s Turner saying, well to sum, he's saying that man-made inventions that can travel about 50 miles an hour still can't catch the natural world, the fastest creature in the British isles, the hare. 而这里我想说的一点就是，透纳想表达什么。概括来说，透纳想表达的是，每小时大约能跑50英里的人造发明仍然追不上自然界，追不上野兔这种全英国跑得最快的动物。

and yet the implication is that the train will eventually catch it up and savage it. 而这里的寓意就是火车会渐渐追上它并把它碾碎。

And so the world is under threat. 这么说世界正在面临威胁。

But Turner， unlike someone like Wordsworth, who was horrified by the onset of the machine age, fuses the whole idea of inevitability, progress, he embraces it. 但透纳并不像华兹华斯那样惧怕机械时代的来临，而是融合了必然性和进步的全面观点，欣然接受了这个时代。

“It’s alarming but at the same time,” he says, “it's the way the world is, and we should celebrate it too.” “这令人担忧，但是同时”透纳说道：“这个世界就是这样的，所以我们也应该为之庆祝。”

Right up to his death, Turner continued to push his painting to an extreme. 直至生命的最后一刻，透纳一直都致力于将自己的创作推到一个新的高峰。

In images like this one, Norham Castle, Sunrise where he uses oils like water color, and gives a fluid delicate luminosity that hovers on the edge of a pure blinding vision, that's almost abstraction. 如在《诺拉姆城堡日出》中，他用水彩画的技法画油画，使得画面中纯粹而炫目的景象周围笼罩着精致流畅的柔光。这几乎是抽象派画法了。

In 1850 he exhibited 4 of these late paintings in the Academy, in the year before he died. 1850年，也就在他去世的前一年，他在学院的展览上展出了4幅这样的晚期作品。

No mean feet for a man of 75. 对于一个75岁的老人来说，这并不容易。

Turner died on the 19th of December, 1851 at his home in Chelsea. 1851年12月19日，透纳在切尔西镇的家中去世。

The doctor noted that just before he passed away, the room was darkened by the dull day. 根据当时医生的记录，就在透纳临死前，黯淡的日光使他的房间昏暗起来。

Moments later, as his spirit left him, quote: “the sun burst forth and shone directly on him with that brilliancy which he loved to gaze on, and transferred to his paintings.” 片刻之后，他的灵魂离开躯体时，“太阳突然爆发出光芒，直接照耀在透纳的身上，那正是他喜欢凝视并转化成绘画的光辉。”

Turner was buried at St. Paul’s Cathedral. 透纳被埋葬在圣保罗大教堂。

5 years after his death, the nation received his vast collection of works, over 1900 drawings and hundreds of water colors and oil paintings, 他去世5年后，国家接受了他捐赠的大量作品，包括1900多张素描和数百幅水彩及油画。

much of which is now on show in Tate Britain, and which has secured his place as unarguably the greatest British landscape painter 其中大部分作品都在泰特英国美术馆展出。这些作品稳固了透纳作为英国最伟大的风景画家的不容置疑的地位。

But he also was a control freak and an artist who built his own myth. 但同时透纳也是一个控制欲极强的艺术家，喜欢自己创造自己的神话。

And so, he gave this painting to the National Gallery. 因此他把这幅画捐给了英国国家美术馆。

He considered it to be his greatest work, Dido Building Carthage, but on condition, that it was shown next to this painting by Claude Lorrain, his great artistic hero. 透纳认为这幅《狄多建设迦太基》是他最杰出的作品，但捐赠有个条件，就是要挂在他心目中的艺术大英雄克劳德•洛兰所作的这幅画旁边。

Now Turner is doing two things. 透纳通过这件事达到了他的两个目的。

One, he is establishing himself in the path in a great western art. 第一， 他在西方画坛上树立了自己的形象。

But two, unlike any other artist here, he stipulated the conditions under which his art must be seen. 第二，与以往的艺术家不同，他确定了他的作品被观看的条件。

And in some way that's very modern, the idea about being concerned with your own image, 从某种程度上，关注自己作品的图像的想法是一种很新潮的做法。

but then as both artist and visionary, academician and rebel, Turner was of his time, and way ahead of it too. 但在当时，透纳既是艺术家也是空想家，既是学院派也是反学院派，他既属于自己的时代，又遥遥领先于那个时代。