Railway Bridge over the River Cart, Paisley

Waller Hugh Paton, 1828–1895

1857

Oil on canvas

Yale Center for British Art

A wide stone railway bridge arches over a calm river at dusk. Buildings line the riverbanks, and several boats are moored near the right bank. The sky is a deep blue with streaks of clouds and a bright moon. Waller Hugh Paton was a Scottish-born landscape painter who was based in Edinburgh for most of his career. Like all artists of his generation, he experienced the transformation of Britain wrought by the Industrial Revolution. In this view of the town of Paisley, Scotland, a steam locomotive pulls a string of freight cars across the new railway bridge. Paisley’s mills took cotton imported from the slave-based plantations in the American South and wove it into textiles printed with the popular Paisley pattern, a design that originated in Mughal India, then under British rule. This painting romanticizes and celebrates the urban industr