Events from the year 1775 in art.
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Turner, Slave Ship
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J.M.W. Turner Film
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1/4 The Genius of Turner : Painting the Industrial Revolution
Transcription
(piano music) >> Lori Landay: We're standing in the Museum of Fine Arts Boston in front of what we know as Turner's "Slave Ship," but the full title of this work is "Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On)." >> Beth Harris: When we first come across this painting, it looks really beautiful. It's got oranges and reds, and we see that typical Turner sunset. We're lost in the thick sensuality of the paint. >> Lori: But then, my eye goes to the bottom right-hand corner, and, in a moment of horror, I see a foot and a leg and a shackle in chains, and all of a sudden, it's not a seascape, and it's not about a sunset, and it's not about light on the water, or not only about those things anymore. >> Beth: There is real carnage right in front of us, in fact, in the closest part of the painting towards us. We're looking at an image of a slave ship that we can see in the distance. This is a ship carrying slaves, and a typhoon has come on. This is based on a poem, but we know that this something that happened in reality and not just once but many times. With the storm coming, the captain of this ship decided to throw the slaves overboard. Apparently, that was the only way you could collect the insurance. If the slaves died of illness or other things while on board, the captain of the ship couldn't claim insurance. So what he has done is he's thrown the slaves overboard, and that's what we see happening. >> Lori: It is really horrifying. We only see parts of their bodies, and there is a swirl of waves and colors. Again, there is this mixture of the beauty of nature, the power of nature, and this horrific human act that is within the context of a much wider horrific human act of slavery. We do have this sense of divine retribution, the storm coming for that slave ship that's been dealing in human lives, and the punishment wreaked by nature is justified on that ship, but there is also a sense of the total indifference of nature because the same storm that's going to overcome that slave ship is also going to drown the slaves themselves. >> Lori: Nature is completely indifferent to the human endeavors, whether they are good, evil, otherwise, whatever. >> Beth: The first owner of this painting was the great Victorian art critic, John Ruskin. Then the painting made its way to Boston to an abolitionist, to someone who believed in and struggled for the ending of slavery. Now, the British had outlawed slavery in 1833 in the colonies; the French do it in their colonies 15 years later, but of course, in America, slavery isn't outlawed until the Civil War. Slavery, we have to remember, is still a really active political cause at this moment. This idea that human beings could do this to each other, not just in the form of actual slavery, of buying and selling human beings, but also in terms of taking advantage of one another just for the sake of money. Of course, that's the kernel of this hideous act that the captain engages in here. >> Lori: When we look into the left border of the painting, we see some really different colors than what we see in the rest of the painting, whites and blues and purples and grays. >> Beth: Ruskin wrote, "Purple and blue, the lurid shadows of the hollow breakers "are cast upon the mist of night, "which gathers cold and low, "advancing like the shallow of death upon the guilty ship, "as it labors amidst the lightning of the sea, "its thin masts written upon the sky in lines of blood." (piano music)
Events
- Nathaniel Hone the Elder courts controversy when his satirical painting The Conjuror is seen to ridicule Sir Joshua Reynolds and attack the English fashion for copying Italian Renaissance painting, and is rejected by the Royal Academy of Arts (ostensibly on the grounds that also includes a nude caricature of fellow Academician Angelica Kauffman, which Hone subsequently paints out). To show his reputation is undamaged, Hone organises a one-man retrospective in St Martin's Lane, London – the first such solo exhibition of an artist’s work.
- Josiah Wedgwood introduces jasperware pottery in England, commissioning designs from John Flaxman.
- Construction of the Cluj-Napoca Bánffy Palace, the modern-day National Museum of Art Cluj-Napoca in Transylvania.
Paintings
- Nathaniel Dance-Holland – Portrait of Captain James Cook
- Joseph Duplessis – Portrait of Christoph Willibald von Gluck
- Marie-Suzanne Giroust – Self-portrait with an image of Maurice Quentin de La Tour (approximate date)
- Anton Graff – Sophie Friederike Hensel
- Sir Joshua Reynolds
- The Earl and Countess of Ely (Upton House, Warwickshire - approximate date)
- Mrs Sheridan as Saint Cecilia (Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire)
- Alexander Roslin – Portrait of Carl von Linné
- John Trumbull – The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker Hill
Births
- February 3 – Louis-François, Baron Lejeune, French general, painter and lithographer (died 1848)
- February 18 – Thomas Girtin, English painter and etcher (died 1802)
- March 4 – Johann Baptist von Lampi the Younger, Austrian portrait painter (died 1837)
- March 24 – Pauline Auzou, French painter (died 1835)
- April 21 – Alexander Anderson, illustrator (died 1870)
- April 23 – J. M. W. Turner, English Romantic landscape painter, watercolourist and printmaker (died 1851)
- July 1 – Cephas Thompson, portrait painter (died 1856)
- July 5 – William Crotch, musician and painter (died 1847)
- July 15 – Sir Richard Westmacott, sculptor (died 1856)
- September 16 – Ernst Willem Jan Bagelaar, Dutch engraver (died 1837)
- October 18 – John Vanderlyn, neoclassical painter (died 1852)
- October 31 – Antonín Machek, Czech painter (died 1844)
- December 29 – Thomas Heaphy, English water-colour and portrait painter (died 1835)
- date unknown
- Nathan Cooper Branwhite, English miniature portrait painter, watercolourist and engraver (died 1857)
- Amelia Curran, Irish painter (died 1847)
- Francis Engleheart, English engraver (died 1849)
Deaths
- January 8 – John Baskerville, typographer and craftsman (born 1707)
- March 17 – Carlo Carlone, Italian painter (born 1686)
- April 10 – Jonas Haas, German-born Danish engraver (born 1720)
- May 18 – Johann Joachim Kändler, German modeller of Meissen porcelain in a rococo style (born 1706)
- June 27 – Ignaz Günther, German sculptor and woodcarver within the Bavarian rococo tradition (born 1725)
- July 8 – Peder Als, Danish historical and portrait painter (born 1725)
- July 21 – Szymon Czechowicz, Polish painter (born 1689)
- August 29 – Francesco Sleter, Italian painter active in England (born 1685)
- September 24 – Emanuel Büchel, Swiss painter (born 1705)
- October 21 – François-Hubert Drouais, French painter (born 1727)
- October 26 – Pierre-Edmé Babel, French engraver (born 1720)
- November 10 – Edme Dumont, French sculptor (born 1720)
- December 8 – Josef Ignaz Mildorfer, Austrian painter (born 1719)
- December 20 – Sigismund Streit, German merchant and patron of the arts (born 1687)
- date unknown
- Jan George Freezen, German portrait painter (born 1701)
- Johan Graham, painter from London active in The Hague and Amsterdam (born 1705)
- probable – Mina Kolokolnikov, Russian painter and teacher (born 1708)