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The Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying)
J. M. W. Turner · Romanticism & Landscape
- Artist
- Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851)
- Date
- 1840
- Dimensions
- 90.8 x 122.6 cm
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Location
- Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, United States
The Slave Ship shows a ship sailing away into a typhoon at sunset, while in the foreground the sea is full of drowning enslaved Africans, still in chains, thrown overboard and attacked by fish and seabirds.
A closer look
The subject was inspired by the real massacre on the slave ship Zong in 1781, when the captain threw over a hundred enslaved people into the sea so that the owners could claim insurance. Turner exhibited the painting in 1840, while campaigners were fighting to abolish slavery worldwide. The blazing sunset, in violent reds and yellows, seems to set the sea on fire. Only gradually does the viewer notice the shackled legs and hands rising from the waves in the lower right. Beauty and horror are combined in one overwhelming image.
More by J. M. W. Turner
In this gallery
Landscape with a Rainbow
The Fighting Temeraire Tugged to Her Last Berth to Be Broken Up
Snow Storm – Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth
Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway
Norham Castle, Sunrise