polity united kingdom victorianconcept:era modern
The Slave Ship
Oil on canvas (1840) by J.M.W. Turner, depicting the aftermath of the Zong massacre (1781), in which enslaved Africans were thrown overboard to claim insurance. John Ruskin called it Turner's 'noblest' work. Held at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Scholarly Significance
Turner's morally charged masterwork on the Zong massacre; one of the most politically and artistically significant British paintings of the 19th century.
Notes
- ·Full title: 'Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying — Typhon Coming On.'
- ·Exhibited at Royal Academy 1840, the year of the Anti-Slavery Convention in London.
- ·Based on the Zong massacre of 1781, when the captain of the slave ship Zong ordered 132 enslaved people thrown overboard to claim insurance.
- ·John Ruskin wrote the most celebrated description in Modern Painters (1843): 'the noblest sea that Turner has ever painted.'
- ·Ruskin sold it c.1869 because he 'found it too painful to live with'; it eventually entered American collections.
- ·Gift of Henry Lee Higginson to the MFA Boston in 1899.
- ·The painting's political context — exhibited amid the abolitionist movement — is inseparable from its visual impact.