"Keelmen Heaving In Coals By Moonlight" by J.M.W. Turner is a famous painting by the artist depicting a beautiful landscape. Here Turner brings the great force of his romantic genius to a common scene of working–class men at hard labour.

Although the subject of the painting is rooted in the grim realities of the industrial revolution, in Turner's hands it transcends the specifics of time and place and becomes an image of startling visual poetry. An almost palpable flood of moonlight breaks through the clouds in a great vault that spans the banks of the channel and illuminates the sky and the water. The heavy impasto of the moon's reflection on the unbroken expanse of water rivals the radiance of the sky, where gradations of light create a powerful, swirling vortex.