The Slave Ship

by Joseph Mallord William Turner, 1840

oil on canvas

Joseph Mallord William Turner(1775-1851) was an English painter of the romantic tradition and is best known for his landscapes in oil. These landscapes sometimes include natural disasters and themes of humans vs nature, as The Slave Ship exemplifies. Many of his works were referred to as “sublime” in their “awe-inspiring, savage grandeur, a natural world unmastered by man, evidence of the power of God”(“Joseph Mallord William Turner Biography”). Human figures are usually rendered as vulnerable and powerless against the wrath of nature and, therefore, God.

As one of Turner’s most celebrated works, Slave Ship is a striking example of the artist’s fascination with violence, both human and elemental. The painting was based on a poem that described a slave ship caught in a typhoon, and on the true story of the slave ship whose captain, in 1781, had thrown overboard sick and dying slaves so that he could collect insurance money available only for slaves “lost at sea.” Turner captures the horror of the event and terrifying grandeur of nature through hot, churning color and light that merge sea and sky. The meaning of this artwork fits the main topic the book, because “Citizen is a dazzling expression of the painful double consciousness of black life in America.” (The Washington Post)

In terms of location, this piece functions as a summary of the suffering of black people since the very beginning of life in America. It is positioned at the very end of the text as a reminder of how the discrimination and violence began, to leave a heavy image as the final element a reader experiences and remembers. This reference to the Atlantic Slave Trade likely resonates with African Americans as many of their ancestors suffered and died in this fashion; and after all their struggles, the descendants of these slaves had to endure Jim Crow, segregation, and other forms of institutional discrimination. In the end, the beginning of the problem cannot be ignored or erased. This is the note with which Rankine ends her book.

Questions to Consider:

• Why does Turner uses red, orange and yellow colors throughout the entire piece?
• What might be the reason Rankine adds an additional photo on the second page with detail of the first?
• Why did this amazing artwork suffer terrible negative comment (critics called it “disaster of poor handwriting) when it displayed on Royal College of Art in 1840?
• Turner was a painter in the 1700s and 1800s, how is this piece still relevant today, especially in a book like Rankine’s?
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Work Cited:

—The Washington Post. "Review of Citizen: An American Lyric". Amazon Book. Web

For more information on Turner’s life and work, please visit

—"Joseph Mallord William Turner Biography."Joseph Mallord William Turner The Complete Works. N.p., n.d. Web. http://www.william-turner.org/biography.html

—"Joseph Mallord William Turner."The National Gallery. N.p., n.d. Web. https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/artists/joseph-mallord-william-turner

—"Joseph Mallord William Turner."Artble. N.p., 07 May 2015. Web. http://www.artble.com/artists/joseph_mallord_william_turner

~ Research by Yaya Zhang, Katherine Stachowski and Sonora Schuck