Lionel Walden: Steelworks, Cardiff at Night 1893-97
When I first saw this painting, I unintentionally started to croon a Depeche Mode song, the Blasphemous Rumors. At the start, there are the Depeche-peculiar noises of steel, hammer, and other industrial sounds what create a dim, stern atmosphere, as if you were in a steelwork factory. But eventually it dissolves into a soft, tuneful refrain, like red-hot molten steel. I feel the same sensation when I look at Lionel Walden’s work.
Even if it depicts an industrial, and not in the least romantic scene, for the first blink at least, the emerging red-hot smokestacks from the darkness make the scene nice and warm. It is beautiful.
On my moody days I imagine it as a metaphor. The right side of the picture, where I assume the factory building stands, is black, a no-way-out-from-hell black. Behind that, pegs away the devil in the red caldron. The steam locomotive diligently supplies the newcomer sinners to him on the rails: this is the terminus. They will work in this sweaty hell for eternity, and they will never see the light again but the light of those red-hot smokestacks.
