The Elephant In The (Ante) Room. Timothy Spall Stars In Mike Leigh’s ‘Mr Turner’ (2014)
The Slave Ship (Turner: 1840)
Just Two Years After Painting ‘The Fighting Temeraire’ Turner Painted The Twin (Non-Identical Twin) Paintings of ‘Rockets & Blue Lights’ (Below) And ‘The Slave Ship’ (Above) 1840 (Which Were Exhibited At The Royal Art Academy Exhibition of That Year).
The First Painting (Below) Was A Reflection of The Practice Sending Up Flares For Ships Who Were Entering Shallow Waters Near Shorelines or Who Were About To Be Approached By Navy Vessels For Continuing The Slave Trade After It Had Been Banned (1833) Notwithstanding Slavery Was Abolished In 1807. It Was Acquired By The Clark Art Institute Cira 1955
The Second Painting (Above) Is Said To Have Been A Protest Piece Against Slavery. Again, Turner Was Using Art For The Purposes of Social Comment (Notwithstanding At One Point He Had Invested In A Sugar Company Himself). This Painting Is Said To Have Been Inspired By The Insurance Company Case of The Zong Massacre (1781) Which Led To A Public Outcry And The Legal Reasoning That Slaves Were Not Chattel For Insurance Purposes But Human Beings. The Painting Did Not Sell At The Time But Is Now One of Turner’s Most Famous Works And Is Exhibited In The Boston Museum of Fine Art @mfaboston
The Thomas Clarkson Book Called ‘The History and Abolition of the Slave Trade’ Was Republished As A Second Edition In 1839 And Is Said To Have Inspired Turner To Paint This Famous Painting The Following Year. Prince Albert Was Reportedly Expected To Be Attending An Anti-Slavery Conference At The Art Institution At The Time.
Rockets & Blue Lights (Turner: 1840)
The Slave Ship (1840)
Zeus’s Thunderbolt Against Slave Traders
The Fighting Temeraire (Turner 1840)
The Age of Sail Gives Way To The Age of Steam. So Says The National Gallery Where This Most Famous of Turner Paintings ‘The Fighting Temeraire’ Is On Display. It Is Part of The Famous Turner Bequest Which Saw The Artist Donate 1000s of His Paintings To The Nation Upon His Passing. The Reflections In The Water, The Red And Orange Rays of Light From The Sun, And The Faint Yet Clear Detail Along The Shoreline, Highlight The Depth of Turner’s Talent. The Fighting Temeraire Tugged To Her Last Berth To Be Broken Up (1838).
It Was Reportedly Sold That Year By The Royal Admiralty To Rotherhithe Shipbreaker And Timber Merchant John Beatson, Who Hired Two Steam Tugs To Tow It Along The Thames From Its sheerness Moorings To His Rotherhithe Wharf, Where It Berthed After A Two Day Journey, Arriving On September 6th 1838, Where It Would Be Duly Broken Up For Scrap And Any Remaining Parts. It Was By Now Mastless, Sailless, Powerless And Largely Just An Empty Hull.
As A Famous Seascaper Turner Artistically Recorded Its Demise From Its Glory Days of 1805 When It Was Crucial In Nelson’s Victory At The Battle of Trafalgar. A Decade Later With The Peace of 1815 And The Development of Steam Engineering Great Warships Voyages Were Less In Vogue. However The Painting Was Shown At The Royal Academy At The Annual Exhibition In 1839 And Remains In Vogue To This Day.
Wilkinson Explores Messaging Baked Into Several of Turner’s Most Beloved Paintings. Is Artistic Coding Really A Regular Ingredient Or Just Part of Regular Psycholgoical Imaginings?
Nick Wilkinson With Historian And Artist Elsa James @thisisrealelsajames
Oh My God. That Is…
elsa james
What The…
Sorry I Don’t Want To Swear.
The Battle of Trafalgar, Nelson & HMS Victory
Nelson, His Wife, And His Lover, Lady Emma Hamilton
Turner’s Slave Ship (1840) & The Poem Called ‘The Ancient Mariner’ By Samuel Coleridge Taylor (1798)
Taylor The Poet Was Just Three Years Older Than Turner (But He Died 17 Years Before Him And 6 Years Before The Artist’s Slave Ship Painting. His Poem ‘The Ancient Mariner’ Was Written In 1798 (When Coleridge Was 26) And The Slave Ship Was Painted In 1840 (In The Next Century; When Turner Was 65).
SCT: 1772 – 1834 ~ JMW: 1775 – 1851
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