quantdave t1_jdzouqr wrote
I'm with the doubters here, except possibly in relation to Monet's 1899-1901 London works. London had long been famed for its smoke, efforts to control pollution dating back to the capital's rapid growth (and that of its coal shipments) around 1600, but into Turner's time much of that use remained domestic rather than industrial: the big increase would come later, with British per capita use (domestic, industrial and transport) nearly doubling from 2.6 tonnes in 1850 to 5 by 1900, a period when London's population grew 2½-fold, and the paper itself indicates that 70% of the rise in the metropolis's sulphur dioxide emissions occurred after Turner's death.
The chart suggests that Paris was a pollution minnow compared even with Turner's London, so if Monet was looking for hazy scenes, London around 1900 would be the place to go: half a century earlier, not so much, at least so far as industry's contribution is concerned.
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