The Ferocity of the Sublime: Slave Ship by J.M.W.Turner
“All that astonished the soul, all that impressed a feeling of terror leads to the sublime.”
--Denis Diderot
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Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On). 1840. The Museum of Fine Arts. Boston
In our modern day usage we think of “sublime" as a still, deep lake not a raging sea. Yet in the poetry, art and music from the mid 18th and early 19th century, the Sublime was more than just a vague superlative. It was used for a range of specific characteristics including awe-inspiring, grandiose and terrifying and implying a “rush” of aesthetic pleasure, even if that rush came from imagining fear or intense pain, as this passage by Lord Byron demonstrates
“And first one universal shriek there rushed,
Louder than the loud ocean, like a crash
Of echoing thunder, and then all was hushed,
Save the wild wind and the remorseless dash
Of billows; but at intervals there gushed,
Accompanied with a convulsive splash,
A solitary shriek, the bubbling cry
Of some strong swimmer in his agony.”
Nothing suggested the Sublime of that era like a shipwreck due to a huge storm at sea. Sublimity as depicted in Turner’s work, defines the unmediated power of nature in the universe and furthers the notion that God is very angry with man, using that power to punish man’s sinfulness.
One interpretation of this painting takes the argument specifically to the sinfulness of the slave trade so that it becomes a moral statement. Slave trafficking was outlawed in England during Turner’s lifetime and it has been suggested that the artist was “instructing” America to do likewise. Turner had been initiated into the anti slavery cause many years earlier.
Ironically (as American abolitionists learned to their horror), pursuit of slave ships by Royal Navy cruisers of the African Squadron had a tragically unintentional consequence: slavers jettisoning their slave cargo to flee more quickly from attack or, if overtaken, ridding themselves of “incriminating evidence.” But cruisers were also rewarded by a “head fee” proportionate to the numbers they liberated. The abolitionists accused navy captains of exploiting the reward instead of attacking the slave ships in port.
Slave Ship is thought to have been inspired by a real incident which occurred in 1781 (and was a turning point in the abolition of slavery in England in 1838) when a slaver cast off his sick and dying Africans on board, still shackled in their irons, into the shark-infested waters of the Caribbean off Jamaica. The reason was strictly commercial: his live cargo was insured. The underwriters would not pay for the loss of life of his slaves due to brutality and disease, but would reimburse for property that could be deemed to be “losses at sea.”
Turner was an artist made for his time: he was a dramatist of light, a master of expressing the vapor and sea spray, the color melange we see in the maelstrom to the left of the canvas and that astonishing white light appearing in the middle. While scenes of storms at sea were a common Romantic era idiom, no artist was better at making the poetic statement that is evoked here.
The foreground is horror at its most Sublime. We can feel the dread of having predatory fish eat human flesh and Turner has painted what appears to be a monster fish in the attack and the smaller, darting fish with terrifying eyes, while sea birds dive and hover over the kill.
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We can logically “see” the bloated leg as the artist pictures it (the torso of the body below is indistinct), since it could have been thrust upward from the force of the churning water. The “floating” black iron chains are a bit more problematic and require a further “suspension of disbelief.”
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What appears to be the ship’s flag --we discern that it is a white flag with a blue stripe -- is floating nearby, raising the question of the flag’s nationality since no other flag appears on the ship’s mast. What flag was this ship flying...and why?
There is also a question of why the ship appears to be sailing into the maelstrom instead of away from it into the clearer sky and calmer water. My logical brain surmises that the ship has been tossed into that position and cannot turn itself around. It has been suggested that the patch of sky to the right of the ship along with the raised arms of the martyred slaves who are sinking beneath the waves signify the light of redemption as well as retribution.
While by and large this painting is highly regarded today, not everyone shares that view. Peter Schjeldahl takes a sarcastic swipe saying “We must never forget to admire him. This tires...it is a congeries of misty, fiery, surfy, sunset stunts—an art less to contemplate than to talk about, calculated to jazz the talkiest of nations. Turner was the Damien Hirst of his day.” But there is a deeper point here, and I think Schjeldahl misses it.
Slave Ship received a chilly reception when Turner exhibited it along with his other sea scene paintings. Turner was considered boorish and unintellectual by the public of his day and this work came in for a good deal of derision. It remained unsold until a young American, John Ruskin, became Turner’s unappointed champion. Ruskin tried to arrange for Slave Ship’s sale but failed, and Ruskin’s father bought the painting as a gift to him. The painting later went to auction and was bought by Alice Hooper, a wealthy and prominent Bostonian who donated it her city’s Museum of Fine Arts, where a genteel band of socially active Bostonians developed a moral interpretation around it -- and it became a catalyst for political action: justification for imperial ventures into the Caribbean.
Slave Ship hangs in that gallery today. It is worth your while -- if you possibly can -- to go see this extraordinary work.
= new reply since forum marked as read
I've been stuck inside so much with all the snow that I tend to write more.
Can't wait for spring...
Plus, my very quick googling suggests that Britain was pressuring Buenos Aires to end the trade through the 1830s, so Turner may have been aiming his comment at Argentina...
On edit: here's what wiki gives as the flag of Argentina in 1840:
Dido building Carthage
"Burning of the houses of Lords and Commons"
