WEBVTT

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Tell them all.

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May 1840.

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The annual exhibition

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of the Royal Academy in London

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has been a great success.

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On display,

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all the reviewers agree

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is one indisputable masterpiece.

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Painted by Edwin Landseer,

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it’s called Laying Down the Law.

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And it features,

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as the learned judge,

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a poodle.

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It is, the critics chorus, perfect.

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Perfect in execution,

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taste and refinement.

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But there’s another painting

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hanging in the 1840 show about which

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the critics also absolutely unanimous

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in dismay and scorn.

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JMW Turner’s Slave Ship.

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How is it that we can see a masterpiece,

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while the critics compared it to

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a kitchen accident

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or the contents of a spittoon?

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Had Turner gone over the top

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with this voyage into a sweaty nightmare,

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this fantastical image of slaves

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cruelly murdered at sea?

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Why had a work Turner had hoped

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would make people weep,

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instead move them to describe it

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as a detestable absurdity?

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What was it about

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this particular painting,

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the consummation of Turner’s career

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that brought down on his head,

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such a storm of abuse?

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We all think we know Turner,

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didn’t we?

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He seems as comfortably British

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as a cup of tea.

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He is, after all,

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the National Gallery’s all-time favourite.

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But there was another Turner.

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The Turner you don’t know.

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The painter of chaos,

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conflagration and apocalypse,

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wild and ambitious paintings,

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that one critic called

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“a picture of nothing,

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and very like”.

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Well this is my Turner,

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extreme Turner.

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The Cockney poet

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just short of madness.

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The Turner we ought to know,

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the Turner we really ought to revere.

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This Turner was on a delirious

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and visionary trip that would culminate

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in the greatest British painting

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of the 19-century,

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The Slave Ship.

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40 years before

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the heroic fiasco of The Slave Ship,

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the young Turner could do no wrong.

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In his twenties,

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the barber’s son had already been tipped

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as the next great thing in British painting.

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With the dab of his brush,

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he could wave fairy dust

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over the genteel British countryside.

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And it would turn into a place

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of sublime enchantment.

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And the quality ate it up.

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Britain was fighting for its life

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against the French,

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and the romance of Albion

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had never bitten deeper

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into the national imagination.

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Turner, meanwhile,

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had been a great honour.

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Fellowship of the Royal Academy at just 26.

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Now, he had to present them

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with a picture to mark his entry.

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He gave them this.

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Which was to say a shock.

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Dolbadern Castle in Snowdonia

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was where a medieval Welsh prince,

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Owen Gough, had met his end.

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In reality,

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it was just a modest pile of stones on a hillside,

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but Turner pumps up the melodrama,

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backlights the desolate crag,

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so that the castle becomes a personification

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of the defiant prince himself.

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The tragic symbol of imprisoned liberty.

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Just in case people didn’t get it,

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he added a little poem.

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How awful is the silence of the waste.

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Where nature lifts her mountains to the sky.

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Majestic solitude.

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Behold the tower where hapless Owen

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long imprisoned pined

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and wrung his hands for liberty in vain.

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Okay, so it’s not exactly Keats,

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but it is Turner reaching for the epic.

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It’s all about atmospherics, not finicky,

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topographical description.

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‘Cause that’s what Britain was for Turner,

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a biological sentiment,

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an instinct in the blood,

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and an irresistibly operatic arrangement

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of light, air and water.

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Elemental, heroic, legendary.

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The painting smoothed the way

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for the young man into the ranks

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of the Academy.

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But it should have put everyone on notice

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that this was a painter

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who’d never settle

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for the charming and the pretty.

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Turner could have made

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a perfectly decent living

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raking it in

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from the pleasure and leisure industry.

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But in his fertile imagination,

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something grand and bloody

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was already stirring.

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But he still had a fortune to make.

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He wasn’t ready yet to be the maker

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of dark epics.

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It was the time to enjoy being

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JMW Turner, RA.

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He’s rolling in money and commission,

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and he buys a West End house

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for his pictures,

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himself and his old dad,

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whom he shamelessly turns into his

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all-purpose servant.

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Old Dad would stretch and prime canvasses.

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Old Dad would patrol the gallery.

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Old Dad would tend

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the vegetable garden out by the river

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and revel in his son’s fame

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and fortune.

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Good old Dad.

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But then, conventional family ties

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don’t seem to mean much to Turner.

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There’s no dutiful Mrs T at home.

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Marriage and art don’t go together,

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he said.

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So instead,

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he takes as a lover the widow of a friend,

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Sarah Danby,

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and installs her round the corner.

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He even has two children by her.

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More illicitly still,

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Sarah is the muse of his erotic imagination.

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His drawings suggest he takes

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as much pleasure in sex

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as a full moon over Buttermere.

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It wasn’t until Turner’s will was published

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that anyone knew

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about Sarah Danby and the children.

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And the erotica

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remained strictly under wraps

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in his lifetime.

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Turner chose to live part of his life

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amidst the shadows of secret fantasies.

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But when he emerged from this world

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and strolled beside the Thames,

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he indulged in another fantasy.

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That he lived in a country

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from which poverty, hunger and misery

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had been banished.

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Turner’s Thames was the place where

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the romance of England came to him

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with lyrical intensity.

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A place of almost narcotic serenity.

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This is the pleasure seeking

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public pleasing Turner.

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And perhaps, he could have settled for this

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mellow dream world,

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gently stroking

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the self-satisfaction of Regency England.

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But even as he drifted trough

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his Home Counties Eden,

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Turner must have been aware

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that alongside this idyll,

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there was another England,

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an England in distress.

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And something in Turner

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wanted to paint that England too.

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For this was the early 1800s,

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the rockiest years in all

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modern British history,

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the time when the distance between

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the fantasy Britain

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and the reality was at its widest.

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The kingdom was supposed to be

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a model of political and social stability.

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But there was a massive unemployment,

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hunger, anger,

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rick burning in the countryside,

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machine smashing in the towns.

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The bloody war with Napoleon’s France

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grinding on and on.

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These are hard times, radical times.

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So Turner produces

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a gritty image of rough Britannia.

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What’s your most delicious fantasy

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of old England?

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Summertime? A picnic?

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Well, here’s a hard-bitten winter dawn,

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and it’s no picnic.

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A shot hare

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slung around the shoulders of a girl.

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Rutted tracks.

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Two men digging a ditch,

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or is it a grave?

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You can feel the tough work of it

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in that hard, frozen soil.

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Everything impassive, unsentimental, dour.

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How thing really are.

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When did Constable ever do winter

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in the North?

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Why would Turner ever do

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something so flinty?

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Well, in Yorkshire,

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he has become best mates

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with someone who will change the way

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he sees the world.

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Walter Fawkes’s view of Britain

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isn’t exactly rose-tinted,

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and he’s not your usual country gent.

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He is a political militant,

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the scourge of the old Tory establishment.

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But the cause that’s most dear to

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his radical toff

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is the great moral crusade of the day,

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the abolition of the slave trade.

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Fawkes’s fury seeped

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into Turner’s imagination.

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One day in 1810,

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Turner took Fawkes’s son

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for a walk on the Yorkshire Moors

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as a storm brewed.

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The two of them sketch away.

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Turner puts his pencil down.

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“There, Hawkey,” he says,

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“in two years you’ll see this,

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and it’ll be called

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“Hannibal Crossing the Alps.”

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So a squall over the Yorkshire Moors

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turns into a no-holds-barred

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Alpine cataclysm.

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A simultaneous blizzard

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and a shaft of sickly sun.

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Hannibal’s army is the victim,

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as it clambers its painful way

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over the Alpine passes.

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Stragglers picked off

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by scary mountain men,

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while a sucking vortex

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hovers over the scene like some gigantic,

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malevolent bird of prey.

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Turner does something tremendous

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in the storm over the Yorkshire Moors.

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It’s not just scenic weather;

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it’s a cosmic reckoning.

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Hannibal is a hit.

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People crowded round it

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so densely,

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the gents couldn’t elbow

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their way in to see it.

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But why this picture pulls in the crowds?

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Not because it was a scene

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from ancient history,

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but because everybody knew

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it was also a modern painting.

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A contemporary story.

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The comeuppance handed out to

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another arrogant invader

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who crossed the Alps in search of glory.

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The archenemy, Napoleon.

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In a crushing putdown,

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Turner shrinks the mighty commander

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to a puny,

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almost comical figure

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in the remote background,

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atop an elephant

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that looks more like a dung beetle.

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You have to say this about Turner, though.

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He’s an equal opportunity pessimist.

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As much as he wants to see

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the end of Napoleon,

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he’s got a damn funny way

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of celebrating Waterloo.

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In 1817,

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does he paint victorious Wellington

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and his gallant scarlet squares

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of embattled grenadiers?

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No, he gives us a carpet of corpses

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in the blackness.

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Wives and sweethearts with their babies,

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pathetically searching the carnage

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for their loved ones.

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An apparition of pure hell.

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Rather than glorify the Iron Duke,

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it seems to exemplify

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one of his pithiest verdicts.

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The next worst thing to a battle lost

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is a battle won.

00:18:52.365 --> 00:18:55.073
No wonder it wasn’t until the 1980s

00:18:55.073 --> 00:18:58.355
that this painting was properly displayed.

00:18:59.166 --> 00:19:00.606
Turner’s refusal to beat

00:19:00.606 --> 00:19:02.086
the patriotic drum

00:19:02.086 --> 00:19:04.138
or wag the flag cost him patrons.

00:19:04.939 --> 00:19:07.118
But with the Field of Waterloo,

00:19:07.118 --> 00:19:09.105
he’s reached for something profound.

00:19:09.112 --> 00:19:11.236
A British art that will act out

00:19:11.236 --> 00:19:13.166
the suffering of victims.

00:19:20.897 --> 00:19:23.147
But, then, Turner knows all about

00:19:23.147 --> 00:19:25.135
the lot of the common people.

00:19:27.863 --> 00:19:31.562
# No power on Earth can e’er divide #

00:19:31.562 --> 00:19:37.009
# The knot that sacred love hath ty’d #

00:19:37.781 --> 00:19:43.409
# No power on Earth can e’er divide #

00:19:43.409 --> 00:19:48.478
# The knot that sacred love hath ty’d #

00:19:49.574 --> 00:19:51.576
He’s not gentleman artist.

00:19:51.886 --> 00:19:53.798
He was born and grew up

00:19:53.798 --> 00:19:56.888
in the filthy back alleys of Covent Garden,

00:19:56.888 --> 00:19:59.245
where every day, he rubbed shoulders

00:19:59.245 --> 00:20:01.835
with the desperate and the destitute.

00:20:02.295 --> 00:20:04.383
#... against our mind #

00:20:04.383 --> 00:20:07.283
# The true love’s knot they faster bind #

00:20:12.508 --> 00:20:14.598
This didn’t make his Waterloo

00:20:14.598 --> 00:20:16.828
or any of his historical epics

00:20:16.828 --> 00:20:18.945
manifestoes for revolution.

00:20:19.549 --> 00:20:23.026
They’re bigger, more disturbing than that.

00:20:23.698 --> 00:20:25.688
They have washing through them

00:20:25.688 --> 00:20:27.194
the tragic truth about

00:20:27.194 --> 00:20:28.452
the powerlessness

00:20:28.452 --> 00:20:30.737
of ordinary people when faced with

00:20:30.737 --> 00:20:32.797
atrocity and disaster.

00:20:32.797 --> 00:20:35.701
People who existed right on the edge.

00:20:36.975 --> 00:20:39.674
And there was someone in his own life

00:20:39.674 --> 00:20:41.264
who’d gone right over it.

00:20:44.074 --> 00:20:45.627
His mother.

00:20:52.063 --> 00:20:53.314
Mary Turner

00:20:53.314 --> 00:20:54.935
was a shrieking fury

00:20:54.935 --> 00:20:56.715
in the painter’s house.

00:20:59.935 --> 00:21:01.546
Driven mad, perhaps,

00:21:01.561 --> 00:21:04.798
the death of Turner’s younger sister.

00:21:07.357 --> 00:21:08.423
In 1800,

00:21:08.423 --> 00:21:10.833
she was incarcerated in Bedlam,

00:21:10.833 --> 00:21:12.865
disappearing from his life

00:21:12.865 --> 00:21:15.315
and dying 4 years later, in total neglect.

00:21:23.547 --> 00:21:25.557
But if Turner abandoned her,

00:21:25.557 --> 00:21:27.430
could there have been,

00:21:27.430 --> 00:21:29.141
I wonder, a haunting?

00:21:31.668 --> 00:21:33.635
Was Mary’s howling rage

00:21:33.635 --> 00:21:35.705
translated into the dark thunder

00:21:35.705 --> 00:21:39.314
and burning gold of Turner’s skies?

00:21:47.741 --> 00:21:49.534
This much I can say.

00:21:50.151 --> 00:21:51.481
That an acute,

00:21:51.481 --> 00:21:54.355
tragic sense of the frailty of human existence

00:21:54.355 --> 00:21:56.019
framed Turner’s life

00:21:56.019 --> 00:21:58.829
and powers the greatest of his works.

00:22:12.554 --> 00:22:14.544
So the figure who populate

00:22:14.544 --> 00:22:16.273
his history paintings

00:22:16.273 --> 00:22:18.498
are often weirdly invertebrate.

00:22:18.755 --> 00:22:21.292
So many rag dolls tossed around

00:22:21.292 --> 00:22:23.772
by the immense forces of fate.

00:22:37.824 --> 00:22:40.369
Painting these discarded marionettes

00:22:40.369 --> 00:22:42.699
was particularly wilful for someone

00:22:42.699 --> 00:22:45.285
who’d studied academic figure drawing.

00:22:45.645 --> 00:22:47.547
But then, despite the fact

00:22:47.547 --> 00:22:49.517
he’s been a fellow at the Academy

00:22:49.517 --> 00:22:51.023
for nearly 20 years,

00:22:51.023 --> 00:22:53.821
Turner was proving to be the odd man out

00:22:53.821 --> 00:22:56.383
in the play-safe world of British art.

00:22:59.833 --> 00:23:01.613
It’s not just what he paints

00:23:01.613 --> 00:23:03.589
that gets him into trouble

00:23:03.589 --> 00:23:05.918
with high-class critics,

00:23:05.918 --> 00:23:08.128
it’s the way he paints it.

00:23:11.037 --> 00:23:13.818
One critic despairs that Turner delights

00:23:13.818 --> 00:23:16.208
in abstractions that go back to

00:23:16.208 --> 00:23:18.318
the first chaos of the world.

00:23:23.158 --> 00:23:24.268
Well, my dears,

00:23:24.268 --> 00:23:25.798
what would you expect from the

00:23:25.798 --> 00:23:27.229
grubby little parvenu

00:23:27.229 --> 00:23:28.800
with his downmarket accent

00:23:28.800 --> 00:23:30.600
and his upmarket house?

00:23:31.090 --> 00:23:33.100
There’s something obstinately coarse

00:23:33.100 --> 00:23:34.873
that clings to him,

00:23:34.873 --> 00:23:36.995
a pungent social aroma.

00:23:37.674 --> 00:23:39.254
When Turner visits France,

00:23:39.276 --> 00:23:41.118
the painter Delacroix is taken aback

00:23:41.184 --> 00:23:42.714
that he looks rather like

00:23:42.714 --> 00:23:44.814
a farmer with unwashed hands.

00:23:45.264 --> 00:23:47.416
Oh, there’s dirt under Turner’s nails, all right,

00:23:47.826 --> 00:23:49.966
but it’s likely to be gamboge yellow

00:23:49.966 --> 00:23:51.377
or Prussian blue,

00:23:51.377 --> 00:23:52.807
not farm muck.

00:23:53.004 --> 00:23:54.284
And the worst thing

00:23:54.284 --> 00:23:55.374
is that he seems to wear

00:23:55.374 --> 00:23:56.659
his unwashed hands

00:23:56.659 --> 00:23:58.784
like a badge of professional pride.

00:23:59.989 --> 00:24:01.319
When a young gentleman

00:24:01.319 --> 00:24:03.528
aspirant artist comes to see him,

00:24:03.528 --> 00:24:05.328
Turner grabs his lily-white hands

00:24:05.338 --> 00:24:06.517
and growls…

00:24:06.517 --> 00:24:08.395
You’re not artist.

00:24:13.659 --> 00:24:14.915
Turner himself

00:24:14.915 --> 00:24:17.431
uses his fingers to make his art;

00:24:17.431 --> 00:24:19.737
keeps a nail deliberately untrimmed

00:24:20.137 --> 00:24:22.337
so he could wield it like a claw

00:24:22.337 --> 00:24:24.609
to cut into the paint surface.

00:24:24.609 --> 00:24:26.619
He’s no dainty brush-flicker.

00:24:26.752 --> 00:24:28.289
He wipes and scrapes,

00:24:28.298 --> 00:24:31.007
attacks the surface with a pumice stone,

00:24:31.007 --> 00:24:32.613
spits into the paint

00:24:32.613 --> 00:24:34.553
and gives it a good smoosh.

00:24:34.873 --> 00:24:37.815
It’s this joyous urchin-like wallowing

00:24:37.815 --> 00:24:40.385
in the muck and slather of paint

00:24:40.385 --> 00:24:43.475
that Turner’s critics found so appalling.

00:24:43.485 --> 00:24:45.520
And one of them complained

00:24:45.520 --> 00:24:47.330
about his perpetual need

00:24:47.330 --> 00:24:48.963
to be extraordinary.

00:24:48.963 --> 00:24:51.130
Well, yes, how very un-British.

00:25:20.300 --> 00:25:22.598
But Turner didn’t wanted to be boxed in

00:25:22.598 --> 00:25:25.068
by what Britain was becoming.

00:25:25.345 --> 00:25:27.093
An empire of solid,

00:25:27.093 --> 00:25:29.033
prosaic commercial facts.

00:25:29.083 --> 00:25:30.933
He needed something more,

00:25:30.933 --> 00:25:33.675
a place where the poetic imagination

00:25:33.675 --> 00:25:35.736
could drift and float.

00:25:40.371 --> 00:25:42.252
There was one place where

00:25:42.252 --> 00:25:45.042
not to be sound or solid was of the essence.

00:25:45.112 --> 00:25:46.188
Venice.

00:25:46.854 --> 00:25:48.860
For 20 years, off and on,

00:25:48.860 --> 00:25:50.982
Turner made the floating city

00:25:50.982 --> 00:25:52.232
his soul mate.

00:26:10.604 --> 00:26:12.383
Turner was spellbound

00:26:12.383 --> 00:26:14.763
and conjured from a wisp here,

00:26:14.763 --> 00:26:16.286
a daub there,

00:26:16.286 --> 00:26:18.556
the gauzy radiance of the place.

00:26:23.873 --> 00:26:25.865
Turner’s critics accused him

00:26:25.865 --> 00:26:28.205
of the cardinal sin of indistinctness.

00:26:28.705 --> 00:26:30.245
But here in the floating city

00:26:30.245 --> 00:26:32.900
where everything was liquid and slippery,

00:26:32.900 --> 00:26:35.363
he could embrace that indistinctness,

00:26:35.363 --> 00:26:37.720
make it his own particular glory.

00:27:36.042 --> 00:27:37.586
Turner could have been

00:27:37.586 --> 00:27:39.616
tranquillised by Venice,

00:27:40.006 --> 00:27:42.026
seduced into becoming

00:27:42.026 --> 00:27:44.012
an accomplished supplier

00:27:44.012 --> 00:27:45.782
of sensuous bliss.

00:27:47.172 --> 00:27:49.574
But the stagnant beauty of the city

00:27:49.574 --> 00:27:52.044
made him think of something else.

00:27:54.384 --> 00:27:57.737
He looked at Venice and he saw death.

00:28:13.746 --> 00:28:15.086
For most of his life,

00:28:15.086 --> 00:28:16.586
Turner had been the picture

00:28:16.586 --> 00:28:17.971
of rude health.

00:28:17.971 --> 00:28:21.314
Now he’s sick, losing weight, wheezing.

00:28:25.468 --> 00:28:26.867
He feels the grip

00:28:26.867 --> 00:28:29.417
of the ancient story of life and death

00:28:29.417 --> 00:28:31.453
in his very own bones.

00:28:51.810 --> 00:28:54.303
Mortality eats away at him.

00:28:55.488 --> 00:28:56.923
His indispensable,

00:28:56.923 --> 00:28:59.303
multi-tasking old dad had died.

00:28:59.303 --> 00:29:01.703
Not just his personal jack-of-all-trades,

00:29:01.703 --> 00:29:03.551
but his best friend.

00:29:03.551 --> 00:29:06.208
Other cherished intimates, Walter Fawkes,

00:29:06.252 --> 00:29:08.390
the old radical, had gone, too.

00:29:10.525 --> 00:29:12.795
To keep the aches and pains at bay,

00:29:12.795 --> 00:29:15.945
he uses a tincture of thorn apple to cope,

00:29:15.945 --> 00:29:17.376
a narcotic,

00:29:17.376 --> 00:29:19.816
which probably sends his always

00:29:19.816 --> 00:29:22.086
hyperactive visual imagination

00:29:22.086 --> 00:29:23.746
into planetary orbit.

00:29:24.716 --> 00:29:26.634
And from his bad dreams

00:29:26.634 --> 00:29:28.404
gallops a biblical horror.

00:29:35.980 --> 00:29:39.692
And I looked and beheld a pale horse,

00:29:40.085 --> 00:29:43.006
and his name that sat on him was Death,

00:29:43.314 --> 00:29:46.344
and Hell followed with him.

00:29:59.726 --> 00:30:01.755
But Turner paints his way

00:30:01.755 --> 00:30:03.635
out of the nightmare.

00:30:03.975 --> 00:30:06.692
Look closely, the skeleton is limp.

00:30:08.437 --> 00:30:11.478
Death is dead.

00:30:11.779 --> 00:30:13.809
Turner lives to paint on.

00:30:16.857 --> 00:30:18.528
He won’t limply surrender

00:30:18.528 --> 00:30:20.838
like some consumptive Romantic.

00:30:21.078 --> 00:30:22.713
Instead he gathers his energies,

00:30:22.713 --> 00:30:25.093
puts his obsession to work,

00:30:25.093 --> 00:30:27.439
makes the cycle of life and death,

00:30:27.439 --> 00:30:29.899
suffering and salvation,

00:30:29.899 --> 00:30:33.415
the theme of his greatest period of painting.

00:30:45.152 --> 00:30:47.769
He’s deep into his middle age.

00:30:47.769 --> 00:30:49.289
When he stares at the waves

00:30:49.289 --> 00:30:51.452
pounding the coast of Kent,

00:30:51.452 --> 00:30:52.984
he feels that rhythm

00:30:52.984 --> 00:30:55.104
of destruction and creation.

00:30:55.264 --> 00:30:57.715
Now, Margate might not seem to you

00:30:57.715 --> 00:30:59.315
much of a place to brood

00:30:59.315 --> 00:31:01.085
on historical destiny,

00:31:01.175 --> 00:31:02.515
but for Turner,

00:31:02.515 --> 00:31:04.325
it was definitely more than just

00:31:04.325 --> 00:31:05.636
seaside ozone

00:31:05.636 --> 00:31:07.786
and a stroll along the beach.

00:31:28.347 --> 00:31:30.956
The sea becomes something more than

00:31:30.956 --> 00:31:33.716
the carrier of power and wealth.

00:31:35.326 --> 00:31:36.886
It’s the stage on which

00:31:36.886 --> 00:31:40.616
the drama of British history gets played out.

00:31:42.596 --> 00:31:44.190
Sometimes that drama

00:31:44.190 --> 00:31:46.340
is fierce and turbulent,

00:31:46.700 --> 00:31:49.663
and sometimes it’s a comforting story

00:31:49.663 --> 00:31:51.723
for revolutionary times.

00:32:17.018 --> 00:32:20.326
So in the painting he calls his “old darling”,

00:32:20.552 --> 00:32:22.947
he gives us romantic wistfulness

00:32:22.947 --> 00:32:25.607
for the veteran battleship of Trafalgar,

00:32:25.607 --> 00:32:27.385
The Fighting Temeraire.

00:32:31.953 --> 00:32:34.544
The vessel is restored fictitiously,

00:32:34.544 --> 00:32:37.029
to one last heroic farewell voyage

00:32:37.029 --> 00:32:39.469
before being broken up.

00:32:40.029 --> 00:32:41.673
In Turner’s picture,

00:32:41.683 --> 00:32:43.833
its masts are still standing,

00:32:43.833 --> 00:32:45.623
its sails furled.

00:32:45.833 --> 00:32:48.066
But the little steam-power tug that pulls it

00:32:48.066 --> 00:32:50.406
isn’t some sort of modern villain.

00:32:50.546 --> 00:32:52.066
It’s simply a fact of life

00:32:52.066 --> 00:32:53.603
in the new Britain,

00:32:53.603 --> 00:32:55.575
a nation in upheaval

00:32:55.575 --> 00:32:57.235
as the Industrial Revolution

00:32:57.235 --> 00:32:58.585
gathers momentum.

00:32:59.765 --> 00:33:01.545
And Turner has perfect pitch

00:33:01.545 --> 00:33:03.729
for a British public torn

00:33:03.729 --> 00:33:05.630
between affection for the past

00:33:05.630 --> 00:33:07.950
and anticipation for the future.

00:33:10.480 --> 00:33:12.528
It’s so emotionally versatile,

00:33:12.528 --> 00:33:13.538
this picture,

00:33:13.538 --> 00:33:15.088
that it lets you indulge

00:33:15.088 --> 00:33:16.588
whatever mood takes you.

00:33:16.588 --> 00:33:18.002
Feel like an elegy?

00:33:18.095 --> 00:33:19.855
Well, fine, then this can be

00:33:19.855 --> 00:33:21.887
the sunset of Nelson’s England.

00:33:22.027 --> 00:33:25.328
Just made a lot of money from an industrial patent,

00:33:25.328 --> 00:33:26.798
and feeling good?

00:33:26.798 --> 00:33:27.770
Fine again,

00:33:27.770 --> 00:33:32.400
this is the sunrise of your new industrial empire.

00:33:38.558 --> 00:33:40.999
But Turner’s restless imagination

00:33:40.999 --> 00:33:43.529
won’t settle for poignant gentleness.

00:33:43.529 --> 00:33:46.807
He knows the truth is more tumultuous

00:33:46.807 --> 00:33:50.447
and that the sea has terrible tales to tell.

00:33:53.618 --> 00:33:55.827
Ships in peril fill his mind,

00:33:55.827 --> 00:33:57.487
and those ships become

00:33:57.487 --> 00:33:59.667
an emblem of the country.

00:33:59.667 --> 00:34:02.126
The oceanic deep becomes the site

00:34:02.126 --> 00:34:05.126
on which imperial destiny unfolds,

00:34:05.126 --> 00:34:07.290
where British history will be wrecked,

00:34:07.290 --> 00:34:09.350
rescued or salvaged.

00:34:17.877 --> 00:34:19.866
The Amphitrite was a convict ship

00:34:19.866 --> 00:34:22.416
carrying women and children to Australia.

00:34:23.286 --> 00:34:24.676
But it didn’t get far.

00:34:24.880 --> 00:34:26.852
In the channel, off Boulogne,

00:34:26.852 --> 00:34:28.223
the ship ran aground

00:34:28.223 --> 00:34:29.923
and began to break up.

00:34:37.768 --> 00:34:39.428
The French offered to land

00:34:39.428 --> 00:34:41.449
the passengers and the crew.

00:34:41.449 --> 00:34:43.723
But the captain, a brutal disciplinarian,

00:34:43.723 --> 00:34:45.389
rejected the offer on the grounds

00:34:45.389 --> 00:34:47.599
he had no authority to land them

00:34:47.599 --> 00:34:50.090
anywhere except their antipodean prison.

00:34:51.980 --> 00:34:54.267
The crew clung to masts and spars,

00:34:54.267 --> 00:34:56.377
and most survived the wreck.

00:34:56.767 --> 00:34:58.740
But the women and children,

00:34:58.740 --> 00:35:00.390
all 125 of them,

00:35:00.390 --> 00:35:02.490
were swept away and drowned.

00:35:04.140 --> 00:35:05.556
Like his Waterloo,

00:35:05.556 --> 00:35:07.006
it’s a painting of victims,

00:35:07.006 --> 00:35:09.106
so much human flotsam and jetsam.

00:35:09.606 --> 00:35:13.251
But this is the bare skeleton of a masterwork.

00:35:13.558 --> 00:35:15.872
Turner never finished or showed it.

00:35:31.229 --> 00:35:34.299
But the idea behind it, cruelty at sea,

00:35:34.299 --> 00:35:36.250
blood, martyrdom,

00:35:36.250 --> 00:35:38.100
retribution and salvation,

00:35:38.100 --> 00:35:40.267
had certainly not gone away.

00:35:44.260 --> 00:35:46.073
It simmered

00:35:46.073 --> 00:35:48.029
and then exploded in a sky

00:35:48.029 --> 00:35:49.679
the colour of blood.

00:36:30.833 --> 00:36:32.440
In the late 1830s,

00:36:32.440 --> 00:36:33.434
one issue

00:36:33.434 --> 00:36:35.434
galvanised British moral outrage

00:36:35.434 --> 00:36:37.484
more than any other:

00:36:37.484 --> 00:36:38.981
slavery.

00:36:59.612 --> 00:37:01.901
Britain had outlawed slavery

00:37:01.901 --> 00:37:03.691
throughout the Empire.

00:37:04.111 --> 00:37:06.191
But in the Hispanic empires

00:37:06.191 --> 00:37:07.939
and the United States,

00:37:07.939 --> 00:37:10.652
it not only survived, but thrived.

00:37:13.739 --> 00:37:15.189
In 1840, in London,

00:37:15.189 --> 00:37:16.769
an International Convention

00:37:16.769 --> 00:37:18.297
of the Great and Good

00:37:18.297 --> 00:37:20.202
was planned to express

00:37:20.202 --> 00:37:22.422
righteous indignation at this fact.

00:37:22.612 --> 00:37:24.677
Turner, initiated into the cause

00:37:24.677 --> 00:37:26.787
so many years ago by his patron,

00:37:26.787 --> 00:37:28.229
Walter Fawkes,

00:37:28.229 --> 00:37:30.349
wanted to have his say in paint.

00:37:38.768 --> 00:37:40.442
And how does he do it?

00:37:41.068 --> 00:37:43.375
By being a thorn in the side

00:37:43.375 --> 00:37:44.985
of self-congratulation.

00:37:50.323 --> 00:37:53.253
Turner reaches back 60 years to resurrect

00:37:53.639 --> 00:37:56.185
one of the most shameful episodes

00:37:56.185 --> 00:37:58.815
in the history of the British Empire.

00:38:20.713 --> 00:38:24.932
In 1781, the British slaver, the Zong,

00:38:24.932 --> 00:38:27.042
was off the coast of Jamaica

00:38:27.042 --> 00:38:29.142
after a routinely profitable journey

00:38:29.142 --> 00:38:30.272
from Africa.

00:38:40.563 --> 00:38:43.382
But deep below decks, there was trouble.

00:38:47.486 --> 00:38:49.840
Slaves were dying at more

00:38:49.840 --> 00:38:51.380
than the usual rate.

00:38:51.870 --> 00:38:54.509
And the ship’s master, Luke Collingwood,

00:38:54.509 --> 00:38:56.631
suddenly had a business disaster

00:38:56.631 --> 00:38:58.371
on his hands.

00:39:01.861 --> 00:39:03.942
His human cargo was insured,

00:39:03.942 --> 00:39:06.171
but the underwriters would only pay up

00:39:06.171 --> 00:39:08.031
if the casualties could be accounted for

00:39:08.031 --> 00:39:09.471
as losses at sea,

00:39:09.471 --> 00:39:10.784
not dead on arrival.

00:39:21.349 --> 00:39:24.549
So Captain Collingwood went below decks

00:39:25.772 --> 00:39:28.361
and began the merciless business of

00:39:28.361 --> 00:39:31.697
selecting which slaves he would swiftly turn

00:39:31.697 --> 00:39:33.787
into “losses at sea”.

00:40:12.293 --> 00:40:14.123
132 Africans,

00:40:14.123 --> 00:40:15.843
men, women and children,

00:40:15.843 --> 00:40:18.636
their hands and feet fettered,

00:40:18.636 --> 00:40:20.414
were thrown overboard

00:40:20.416 --> 00:40:22.586
into the shark-infested waters

00:40:22.586 --> 00:40:24.526
of the Caribbean.

00:40:38.782 --> 00:40:41.404
The moral horror of the case of the Zong

00:40:41.404 --> 00:40:42.818
was the moment

00:40:42.818 --> 00:40:44.538
when thousand of Britons

00:40:44.538 --> 00:40:46.658
abandoned their indifference

00:40:46.658 --> 00:40:48.612
and became campaigners

00:40:48.612 --> 00:40:50.562
against the slave trade.

00:41:05.824 --> 00:41:09.155
132 Africans perished horribly,

00:41:09.155 --> 00:41:11.475
but a mass movement was born

00:41:11.475 --> 00:41:13.568
from their martyrdom.

00:41:20.378 --> 00:41:22.078
Turner’s approach to this

00:41:22.078 --> 00:41:23.463
appalling tragedy

00:41:23.463 --> 00:41:24.752
was not that of

00:41:24.752 --> 00:41:26.922
a literal historical illustrator.

00:41:27.752 --> 00:41:29.802
What the great enchanter

00:41:29.802 --> 00:41:31.590
of the canvas wanted was,

00:41:31.590 --> 00:41:32.802
Prospero-like,

00:41:32.802 --> 00:41:35.457
to summon an apocalypse, a typhoon.

00:41:54.363 --> 00:41:56.256
The Slave Ship pitches us

00:41:56.256 --> 00:41:58.624
into the midst of a feverish dream

00:41:58.624 --> 00:42:00.520
of catastrophe and terror,

00:42:00.520 --> 00:42:02.176
sin and retribution.

00:42:11.626 --> 00:42:13.396
The silhouetted ship,

00:42:13.396 --> 00:42:15.768
almost engulfed in the erupting spray,

00:42:15.768 --> 00:42:17.338
is both a real vessel

00:42:17.338 --> 00:42:19.932
and something cursed and haunted,

00:42:19.932 --> 00:42:22.924
like the ship of the Ancient Mariner.

00:42:24.120 --> 00:42:27.442
Waves seethe with monsters,

00:42:27.442 --> 00:42:29.842
a kind of obscene piranha-like

00:42:29.842 --> 00:42:32.394
nibbling and gobbling.

00:42:37.244 --> 00:42:38.865
And the oncoming fishy monster

00:42:38.865 --> 00:42:39.865
is not to be catch off

00:42:39.865 --> 00:42:41.865
the coast of Jamaica,

00:42:41.865 --> 00:42:43.331
but off the canvas

00:42:43.331 --> 00:42:44.981
of Hieronymus Bosh,

00:42:44.981 --> 00:42:46.701
Hell, in high water.

00:42:53.685 --> 00:42:56.477
Of course, it has its imperfections,

00:42:56.477 --> 00:42:58.127
all that flailing flurry of action

00:42:58.127 --> 00:42:59.866
in the foreground,

00:43:00.706 --> 00:43:03.441
the mysteriously floating iron fetters,

00:43:03.441 --> 00:43:05.929
the flung limb that may or may not

00:43:05.929 --> 00:43:08.289
be detached from its torso.

00:43:08.929 --> 00:43:11.496
All the frantic fishy action could seem

00:43:11.496 --> 00:43:13.846
too fussily staged.

00:43:14.786 --> 00:43:15.816
In the end,

00:43:15.816 --> 00:43:17.888
there’s only one test that matters.

00:43:17.888 --> 00:43:19.168
You come into the room,

00:43:19.168 --> 00:43:21.025
you fix it in your sights,

00:43:21.025 --> 00:43:22.660
does it or does it not

00:43:22.660 --> 00:43:24.750
attack you in the guts?

00:43:24.750 --> 00:43:25.947
It does.

00:43:31.153 --> 00:43:33.190
Does your heart jump? Do your eyes widen?

00:43:33.190 --> 00:43:34.621
Does your pulse race?

00:43:34.621 --> 00:43:35.621
Do you feet get a bad attack

00:43:35.621 --> 00:43:37.313
of lead boots,

00:43:37.313 --> 00:43:39.565
you’re so struck down by it? They do.

00:43:43.719 --> 00:43:46.754
For Turner has drowned you in this moment,

00:43:46.844 --> 00:43:48.254
pulled you into this terrifying

00:43:48.254 --> 00:43:50.219
chasm in the ocean,

00:43:50.219 --> 00:43:52.743
drenched you in his bloody light.

NOTE Paragraph

00:43:52.822 --> 00:43:54.198
Exactly the hue

00:43:54.198 --> 00:43:57.428
you sense on your blood-filled optic nerves

00:43:57.428 --> 00:43:59.615
when you close your eyes

00:43:59.615 --> 00:44:01.525
in blinding sunlight.

00:44:03.665 --> 00:44:05.864
Though almost all of these critics

00:44:05.864 --> 00:44:07.064
believed that The Slavers

00:44:07.064 --> 00:44:09.315
represented an all-time low

00:44:09.315 --> 00:44:11.575
in Turner’s reckless disregard

00:44:11.575 --> 00:44:13.314
for the rules of art

00:44:13.384 --> 00:44:16.214
it was in fact his greatest triumph

00:44:16.214 --> 00:44:18.574
in the sculptural carving of space.

NOTE Paragraph

00:44:20.244 --> 00:44:22.710
For none of the stormy atmospherics,

00:44:22.710 --> 00:44:26.050
the great pinwheel fury of reds and golds,

00:44:26.050 --> 00:44:28.341
would have the impact they did,

00:44:28.341 --> 00:44:29.514
were it not for that deep trough

00:44:29.514 --> 00:44:32.134
Turner has cut in the ocean,

00:44:32.134 --> 00:44:34.394
which at the centre of the painting

00:44:34.394 --> 00:44:37.964
makes the blackly heaving swells stand still

00:44:37.964 --> 00:44:40.539
as though the wrathful hand of Jehovah

00:44:40.539 --> 00:44:42.286
has suddenly passed

00:44:42.286 --> 00:44:44.336
over the boiling waters.

00:44:47.096 --> 00:44:49.205
For this is a day of martyrdom,

00:44:49.435 --> 00:44:52.065
retribution and judgement.

00:44:56.944 --> 00:44:58.801
But also a scene,

00:44:58.801 --> 00:45:01.801
Turner must have optimistically thought,

00:45:01.801 --> 00:45:03.739
of vindication.

00:45:04.739 --> 00:45:07.299
It would be a sin redeemed.

00:45:08.799 --> 00:45:11.923
Slavery would be defeated.

00:45:14.886 --> 00:45:16.682
There is, after all,

00:45:16.682 --> 00:45:18.635
a patch of clearing blue

00:45:18.635 --> 00:45:21.995
at the top right corner of the painting.

00:45:31.923 --> 00:45:34.066
The critics went to town.

00:45:34.476 --> 00:45:36.616
Turner became the butt of jokes,

00:45:36.616 --> 00:45:39.877
a crackpot, old loon, lost in the tempest

00:45:39.877 --> 00:45:42.627
with his ridiculous painting.

00:45:42.627 --> 00:45:45.783
And its even more ridiculous full title,

00:45:47.721 --> 00:45:48.976
Slavers,

00:45:48.976 --> 00:45:52.118
Slave Ship Throwing Over the Death and Dying,

00:45:52.118 --> 00:45:54.498
Typhoon Coming on.

00:45:57.088 --> 00:45:58.538
Punch magazine joined in

00:45:58.538 --> 00:46:00.444
the chorus of catcalls,

00:46:00.444 --> 00:46:01.514
lampooning Turner

00:46:01.514 --> 00:46:04.600
by inventing a painting with the title,

00:46:04.600 --> 00:46:06.297
“A typhoon bursting a samoon

00:46:06.297 --> 00:46:08.557
over a whirlpool maelstrom”,

00:46:08.577 --> 00:46:10.521
“Norway, a ship on fire,

00:46:10.521 --> 00:46:12.733
and eclipse with the effect

00:46:12.733 --> 00:46:14.833
of a lunar rainbow”.

00:46:26.498 --> 00:46:27.742
But Punch

00:46:27.742 --> 00:46:29.912
and all the other high-hat critics

00:46:29.912 --> 00:46:32.300
missed the one overwhelming point

00:46:32.300 --> 00:46:35.309
which makes the greatest British picture

00:46:35.309 --> 00:46:37.349
of the 19th century,

00:46:38.919 --> 00:46:43.359
the perfect match between message and form.

00:46:45.326 --> 00:46:48.000
The payoff of the slaves’ martyrdom

00:46:48.020 --> 00:46:50.730
would in the end be freedom.

00:46:59.293 --> 00:47:01.399
So Turner has given himself

00:47:01.399 --> 00:47:02.969
glorious freedom

00:47:02.969 --> 00:47:05.259
with his brush and with his colour,

00:47:05.259 --> 00:47:07.139
and with his imagery,

00:47:07.139 --> 00:47:10.279
to convey the power of the sacred moment.

00:47:49.756 --> 00:47:51.816
Two years after the debate

00:47:51.816 --> 00:47:53.572
of The Slave Ship,

00:47:53.572 --> 00:47:54.898
a young Scottish admirer,

00:47:54.898 --> 00:47:56.638
William Leitch,

00:47:56.638 --> 00:47:59.124
visited Turner’s house in Queen Anne Street.

00:48:08.497 --> 00:48:10.437
He’d herd that the Turner gallery

00:48:10.437 --> 00:48:12.009
was in disrepair,

00:48:12.009 --> 00:48:14.312
but nothing could possibly have prepared

00:48:14.312 --> 00:48:16.262
Leitch for the squalor.

00:48:20.959 --> 00:48:22.919
I walked backwards and forwards

00:48:22.919 --> 00:48:24.103
in the gallery,

00:48:24.103 --> 00:48:26.129
feeling cold and uncomfortable.

00:48:26.269 --> 00:48:28.619
There was no sound to be heard

00:48:28.619 --> 00:48:30.002
but the rain splashing

00:48:30.002 --> 00:48:31.882
through the broken windows

00:48:31.882 --> 00:48:33.332
upon the floor.

00:48:34.672 --> 00:48:37.734
Leitch stood in the evil-smelling gloom.

00:48:38.241 --> 00:48:41.107
And as peered at Turner’s most recent work,

00:48:41.160 --> 00:48:43.488
among which was hanging, somewhere,

00:48:43.865 --> 00:48:46.739
the scarlet explosion that was the unsold,

00:48:46.739 --> 00:48:49.670
unwanted, unloved Slave Ship,

00:48:49.670 --> 00:48:52.360
he felt more and more depressed.

00:48:53.252 --> 00:48:54.972
But this was the moment

00:48:54.972 --> 00:48:57.077
when the country’s favourite painter,

00:48:57.077 --> 00:48:59.878
once revered as the patriarch of British art,

00:48:59.878 --> 00:49:02.958
was written off as a senile lunatic.

00:49:16.148 --> 00:49:18.309
Yet the effect of the critical onslaught

00:49:18.309 --> 00:49:20.799
is to make him more, not less, brave.

00:49:20.799 --> 00:49:22.309
He’s off on his own now,

00:49:22.309 --> 00:49:23.870
the solitary mariner

00:49:23.870 --> 00:49:26.144
on a completely unchartered ocean

00:49:26.144 --> 00:49:27.874
of pure painting.

00:50:42.144 --> 00:50:44.464
Alongside all these scenes

00:50:44.464 --> 00:50:46.628
of oceanic turmoil,

00:50:46.628 --> 00:50:49.422
Turner was still capable of painting images

00:50:49.422 --> 00:50:51.432
of exquisite liquid calm.

00:50:52.082 --> 00:50:53.779
But you have the feeling

00:50:53.779 --> 00:50:55.879
he could do those in his sleep.

00:50:56.169 --> 00:50:58.701
It’s when his whirlpool of paint resolves

00:50:58.701 --> 00:51:01.151
itself into something weightier and mightier

00:51:01.151 --> 00:51:04.459
than the entertainment of the senses,

00:51:04.915 --> 00:51:06.055
when he reaches towards

00:51:06.055 --> 00:51:09.055
the truth of history and eternity

00:51:09.055 --> 00:51:11.738
that I think Turner is at his greatest.

00:51:12.673 --> 00:51:13.933
That’s when he changes

00:51:13.933 --> 00:51:15.909
not just British art,

00:51:15.909 --> 00:51:19.636
but all of art, most completely.

00:51:25.596 --> 00:51:26.973
And you know,

00:51:26.973 --> 00:51:28.583
this is why Turner still matters to us

00:51:28.583 --> 00:51:30.614
and always will.

00:51:30.614 --> 00:51:32.773
That old Cockney geezer in his battered hat

00:51:33.197 --> 00:51:35.103
and filthy coat transport us somewhere

00:51:35.400 --> 00:51:38.420
the slick conformist would never dare to go.

00:51:38.782 --> 00:51:43.553
Into the eye of history’s storm.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Into the ocean of light.