Joseph Mallord William Turner
On the night of October 16, 1834, fire consumed the Houses of Parliament in London. Londoners gathered along the banks of the river Thames to gaze in awe at the horrifying spectacle. Initially, a low tide made it difficult to pump water to fire-fighting equipment on land; likewise, it hampered steamers towing fire-fighting equipment up the river. Although the tides eventually shifted, the effort was futile, as the fire burned uncontrollably for hours. Turner records this as the steamers in the lower-right corner head toward the flames. Although Turner based the painting on an actual event, he used the disaster as the starting point to express man’s helplessness when confronted with the destructive powers of nature, here dissolved in brilliant swaths of color and variable atmospheric effects that border on abstraction.
We present this painting thanks to Cleveland Museum of Art and it may be a good methaphore of what's going on now with Brexit... but still, it's a beautiful piece of art! Btw., the CMA has a new Collection Online! You can now access more than 61,000 artwork records, dive deep into provenance, zoom in on detail, watch videos, & explore 3-D models. Have fun :)
P.S. Nature metaphors were a speciality of Romanticist painters. Some of them were strongly fascinated with volcanoes. See it here!