Individual paintings by artists including Vincent van Gogh and Edvard Munch have been shown to depict specific atmospheric phenomena, raising the question of whether longer-term environmental change influences stylistic trends in painting. Anthropogenic aerosol emissions increased to unprecedented levels during the 19th century as a consequence of the Industrial Revolution, particularly in Western European cities, leading to an optical environment having less contrast and more intensity. Here, we show that trends from more figurative to impressionistic representations in J.M.W. Turner and Claude Monet's paintings in London and Paris over the 19th century accurately render physical changes in their local optical environment. In particular, we demonstrate that changes in local sulfur dioxide emissions are a highly statistically significant explanatory variable for trends in the contrast and intensity of Turner, Monet, and others' works, including after controlling for time trends and subject matter. Industrialization altered the environmental context in which Turner and Monet painted, and our results indicate that their paintings capture changes in the optical environment associated with increasingly polluted atmospheres during the Industrial Revolution. Significance Individual paintings are known to depict snapshots of particular atmospheric phenomena, raising the possibility that paintings could also document longer-term environmental change. During the Industrial Revolution, air pollution increased to unprecedented levels, but these values remain uncertain given the lack of widespread, direct measurements. Here, we show that stylistic changes from more figurative to impressionistic paintings by Turner and Monet over the 19th century strongly covary with increasing levels of air pollution. In particular, stylistic changes in their work toward hazier contours and a whiter color palette are consistent with the optical changes expected from higher atmospheric aerosol concentrations. These results indicate that Turner and Monet's paintings capture elements of the atmospheric environmental transformation during the Industrial Revolution.
