UNIT 3
British Painting
The Slave Ship
William Turner was an English Romantic landscape painter, watercolourist and printmaker, whose style is said to have laid the foundation for Impressionism. Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, but is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivaling history painting. Although renowned for his oil paintings, Turner is also one of the greatest masters of British watercolour landscape painting. He is commonly known as "the painter of light".
Turner's talent was recognised early in his life. His mature work is characterised by a chromatic palette and broadly applied atmospheric washes of paint. Turner placed human beings in many of his paintings to indicate his affection for humanity on the one hand , but its vulnerability and vulgarity amid the 'sublime' nature of the world on the other hand. The significance of light was to Turner the emanation of God's spirit and this was why he refined the subject matter of his later paintings by leaving out solid objects and detail, concentrating on the play of light on water, the radiance of skies and fires. Although these late paintings appear to be 'impressionistic' and therefore a forerunner of the French school, Turner was striving for expression of spirituality in the world, rather than responding primarily to optical phenomena.
"The Slave Ship" or "Slavers Throwing overboard the Dead and Dying — Typhon coming on" is a painting by Turner, first exhibited in 1840.
The subject of the painting is the practice of 18th century slave traders who would throw the dead and dying human 'cargo' overboard during the middle passage in the Atlantic Ocean in order that they might claim the insurance for 'drowning'.
By painting such an emotive subject Turner was attempting to assist in the abolitionist campaign. The violent power of the sea and the strange sea creatures represent the forces of nature punishing the guilty. The painting was widely admired for its use of colour and the way in which sea and sky merge around the distant ship. In the lower portion of the painting, hands of enslaved Africans can be seen still shackled.
The picture is full of romantic effects and symbolism. It shows Turner’s absorption with the sea, especially the sea as it effected ships.