Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On)

Landscape and the Sublime

J.M.W. Turner

Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On)

1840

Oil on canvas, 90.8 × 122.6 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

A sailing ship heads into a typhoon while chained bodies sink and struggle in the foreground. The cruelty of the slave trade is shown with no hero and no rescue.

  • Shown at the Royal Academy with catalogue lines from his own Fallacies of Hope describing the scene.
  • Look at the lower right: a shackled leg rises from the water among fish and gulls.
  • The ship itself is small and set back in the middle distance, not the focus of the scene.
  • Outrage comes through color and weather rather than story detail: blood-red light and a heaving sea make the crime felt rather than described.
  • John James Ruskin bought it in 1843 as a gift for his son, the critic John Ruskin; the museum bought it in 1899.

Image: Wikimedia Commons · Public domain (PD-Art)

49 / 74