Caspar David Turner The Slave Ship

Like earlier paintings by Caspar David Friedrich, Turner's The Slave Ship emphasizes the power of nature through the diminutive representation of that which is human or man-made. However, while Friedrich’s natural world possesses stillness and tranquility, Turner’s is cataclysmic and terrifying. This is illustrated by the artist’s loose brushwork and use of vivid colour. In The Slave Ship, the carnage of nature is comparable in brutality to the slave trade, a practice that at the time of the creation had been outlawed in Britain but not in the U.S. Intending to educate his audience on the horrors of slavery, Turner painted a dead slave in the bottom right of the canvas (the area that would be geographically closest to the viewer). This calls