The Girl-Geek Anthropologist

Last night, Simon Schama's Power of Art JMW Turner, whose painting The Slave Ship, brought me to tears when I first saw it in a picture. The original is in Boston, and hopefully, I'll get to see it very soon.

The story behind this painting is this: Slave ships during the transatlantic slave trade were insured for their cargo (i.e. slaves). However, the insurance would only pay for lost slaves at sea, and not those who arrived ill. Because the conditions on the ships were so horrific, many of the Africans on it became gravely ill. Rather than them arriving ill and costing the traders money, they ended up getting thrown overboard. The image here is from one particular event, but the occurence of throwing the slaves overboard was certainly not unique for this one particular event.

Here's what Schama says about the painting:

Simon Schama on Turner

"In 1840 in London, an international convention of the Great and Good was planned to express righteous indignation against slavery in the United States. Turner, initiated into the cause many years before by his patron, Walter Fawkes, wanted to have his say in paint. So how does he do it? By being a thorn in the side of self congratulation.

He reaches back 60 years to resurrect one of the most shameful episodes in the history of the British Empire when 132 Africans - men, women and children, their hands and feet fettered - were thrown overboard into the shark infested waters of the Caribbean. And Turner has drowned you in this moment, pulled you into this terrifying chasm in the ocean, drenched you in this bloody light - exactly the hue you sense in your blood filled optic nerves when you close your eyes in blinding sunlight.

Though almost all of his critics believed that the painting represented an all time low in Turner's reckless disregard for the rules of art, it was in fact his greatest triumph in the sculptural carving of space." http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/powerofart/turner.shtml

Here is the painting:

Joseph Mallord William Turner, Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On), 1840 (Oil on canvas). © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts, USA/ Henry Lillie Pierce Fund/ The Bridgeman Art Library

Some useful links:

• Click on this link to view a larger size.
• Click here for a very nice feature from the Bostom Fine Arts Museum
• MFA Boston: Image Zoom

There are so many details worth pointing out, however. Most of the action is in the bottom part of the image, on the left and the right). It depicts people still in chains drowning under the water, and fighting the currents of the angry sea.

On the far bottom right, there's even a sea monster that's come to devour one of the drowning victims.


Schama notes how this painting denotes the anger that Turner felt regarding this great tragedy, and that his depiction of the event takes on an apocalyptic nature. What makes this painting a great work of art is that it is not only incredible due to its brilliant colors and techniques, but it evokes anger and disgust (and even shame) in the viewer.

George Landow from Brown University has a very nice write-up of the painting: http://www.victorianweb.org/art/crisis/crisis4e.html