Light and Colour (Goethe's Theory) - the Morning after the Deluge - Moses Writing the Book of Genesis

A glowing circular composition dominates the scene, built from layers of yellow and brown that spiral around a dark figure standing near the center of the vortex. Within the swirling atmosphere a serpent appears, coiling amid the painted light, lending the religious subject an unsettled, almost visionary quality. The work was created in 1843 using oil paint on canvas. Joseph Mallord William Turner, a British painter associated with Romanticism, also produced the notable work Calais Pier. One detail worth noticing is how the brushwork dissolves solid form into radiant, circling motion, so that the dark figure seems almost absorbed by the surrounding light rather than separate from it.