Table of contents::
Table of contents: - Biography of J.M.W. Turner
- Analysis
- Interpretation
Slide3:
J. M. W. Turner was a student of the painter Reynolds. In 1802 he travelled to France where he was inspired by especially Claude Lorrain and Poissin. Turner was a romantic painter and produced a lot of: watercolour-pictures, landscapes in heroic style and genre paintings and portraits.
Many art critics have later called Joseph Mallord William Turner the father of impressionism.
Full name: Joseph Mallord William Turner Lived from 1775 – 1851 Biography
Slide4:
The first thing that attracted my eye was the yellow light in centre of the painting. It shines very bright. Then my eyes moved leftwards to the light-grey, rough waves running high around the wooden ship (maybe a schooner) caught under a crest. After that my eyes were led to the foreground where limbs and chains refracts the dark and turbid water.
The first impression the picture gave me was of a yellow/red sunset over a green and brown, stormy ocean. But then I suddenly realised how much terrifying pain and suffering this painting depicts. A lot of action takes place in the picture and it is difficult to see the exact details of the foreground while the motive is a bit blurred. About seven gulls circles over the troubled water, attracted by the brown hands sticking up the weaves reaching for air and freedom. Black metal chains surrounds the wrists of the struggling hands.
The bright light (probably the sun) creates a kind of vertical line which divides the picture into two parts. On the right side of the line the sky is clear and on the left of the line the sky is dark and it looks like the storm clouds have been set on fire.
The picture is bird’s eye perspective because we see the whole field of vision from above. Analysis
Slide5:
J. M. W. Turner was inspired to paint „Slavers throwing overboard the dead and dying – Typhoon coming on“ by a true story of an English slave ship, called Zong, travelling from Africa to Jamaica in 1783 with the hold full of enslaved Africans. A disease spread in the hold of the ship and the English captain threw 137 sick slaves overboard, cause if the slaves were found dead of illness and not lost at sea he would not collect insurance money.
The way the wooden ship is tossed around by the water and the wind could symbolise how helpless we are against the forces of the elements. The desperate fight between civilisation and nature.
The way the light is placed and the way it shines could symbolise God. Maybe the typhoon is moving towards the ship because God wants to punish the captain and the crew of the ship fore their outrages against the sick, and now drowning, slavers.
I think one of the reasons that Turner has painted this picture, is that he wants to depict what horrible things slavers were exposed to. The slave traders looked upon them as nothing more then an object and treated them in a terribly inhuman way. Interpretation
Slide6:
The End