Charlotte Mullins comments on Slave Ship

WHEN Turner was 65 years old, he painted Slave Ship. By 1840, Britain had ceased its involvement in the slave trade— indeed, was working to halt it—but other countries persisted. When the world’s first anti-slavery convention was held in London that year, Turner’s Slave Ship hung nearby, on the wall in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, throughout.

The painting is believed to record a tragic event of 1781, when British slave ship Zong was crossing the Atlantic from Ghana to Jamaica. Many people in the hold were ill, water was running low (so the crew averred) and a storm was approaching. The callous captain decided to throw the sick overboard to enable him to claim compensation when he reached port—insurance would cover slaves lost at sea in a storm, but not those who succumbed to illness on board. All told, more than 130 slaves were pitched into the sea, still alive and still wearing shackles, giving them no chance of survival.

Turner’s painting is a maelstrom of paint. Waves crash over the ship, silhouetted against a setting sun, as the sea churns with the desperate struggles of doomed slaves. Shackled hands clutch the air as birds and fish circle hungrily. It is a tragic painting, full of emotional charge, and it packs a heavy punch today. However, critics at the time focused more on Turner’s expressive use of colour, disliking the ‘marigold sky’ and the ‘horrible sea of emerald and purple’. A young John Ruskin felt quite the opposite and praised it highly. Four years later, his father bought him the painting as a New Year’s present.