The Slave Ship :
The Slave Ship
1840 The Slave Ship. By Joseph Mallord Turner (1775-1851)
Full title: Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying - Typhoon Coming On The Slave Ship A presentation by:
Kathy Nielsen 1.z Nørre Gymnasium Denmark
Info - revolving the picture:
Info - revolving the picture Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On), 1840; Oil on canvas; H x W: 90.8 x 122.6 cm (35 11/16 x 48 5/16 in.) unframed.
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Short biography:
Short biography Turner, Joseph Mallord William
Type of Work:
Painting
Born:
1775
Died:
1851
Nationality:
British
Style/Movement:
Romanticism
Best Known For:
Landscape paintings that appear to almost glow.
Important Works:
Calais Pier, 1803
The Grand Canal, 1835
Self portrait The Grand Canal
1835
(if enlarged press the picture) Calais Pier, 1803
(if enlarged press the picture)
Short Biography
The genre :
The genre "Romanticism is a category of art based on the recognition of the principle that man possesses the faculty of volition.”
Citat: anonymes Romanticism This picture is an example Romanticism. Romanticism was a major movement in the age of enlightenment (19th century). Paintings in romantic stile are lushes with colour; they portrayed human emotion more than past styles in the 19th century. Highly regarded painters of this movement include Eugene Delacroix, William Turner and Jean Auguste Domenique Ingres.
Romanticism is a European and American movement extending from about 1790 to 1850. Romanticism cannot be identified with a single style, technique, or attitude, but romantic painting is generally characterized by a highly imaginative and subjective approach, emotional intensity, and a dreamlike or visionary quality. Where as classical and neoclassical art is calm and restrained in feeling and clear and complete in expression, romantic art characteristically strives to express by suggestion states of feeling too intense, mystical, or elusive to be clearly defined.
Neoclassical art: Is a very stiff form of art, if you were to paint a painting of for example Napoleon on a horse, he would just be sitting looking very neutral. But if you were to paint the same picture in a romantic stile the horse would be rearing, and Napoleons cape would be flaring in the wind.
Picture analysis:
The full title of the painting i have chosen is “Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying - Typhoon Coming On”. The Slave Ship recreated a true incident; a cargo of epidemic stricken blacks had been dumped because insurance could be collected only on those “lost” at sea and not on those felled by disease. Turner fused the anguish of the victims and the churning of the waters into an epic of horror made even more vivid by colours running wild... The horror of the event is matched by Turner's emotional depiction of it. The particulars of the event - the sun, the ship, the sea filled with bodies of slaves jettisoned from the ship - are almost lost in the boiling colours of the work. Turner, in works like The Slave Ship, released colour from any defining outlines in order to express the forces of nature and the painter's emotional response to them. The reality of colour is one with the reality of feeling. The colours of the painting are very strong, warm and alive. The first thing which cachets your eye is the sun, it is very bright. There is actually a ”middle line” in the picture which goes through the sun, the middle line separates to kinds of weather, on the left side there are more dark colours, and you can see the typhoon coming, and on the right side the sky is blue. It is actually a bit hard to see The Slave Ship, it is very diffuses.
Turner, did trough his life, devoted himself to landscape painting, which he transformed to convey not only natural effects, but also emotion and perception. In this example, his interpretation of an actual event had political impact, particularly in the United States, where it became a powerful symbol for the abolitionist movement when it entered a Boston collection.
I really like this painting, especially the colours. But it is a bit terrifying to think about story behind it, in a way i can’t believe that any body could do such a thing to another human, then again i don't think that the English/white men saw the slaves as human, and I guess i can understand that they wanted the insurance, as horrible as that may seem.
Picture analysis Picture analysis
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The slave ship (enlarged):
The slave ship (enlarged)
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