Cologne, the Arrival of a Packet Boat, Evening

The city of Cologne glows along the water at evening as a packet boat arrives, its passengers and the riverside dissolved in a haze of golden light reflected on the gently rippling surface. J. M. W. Turner subordinates the whole scene to luminous atmosphere, the architecture and figures melting into shimmering color. Now in the Frick, it shows the English master's lifelong obsession with light and air - a topographical view transformed into a poem of evening radiance, the solid world half-dissolved into the warm, glowing medium that was always his true subject.