The Slave Ship
1840 · Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), Boston
Turner took the Zong case, where a slaver threw its human cargo overboard for the insurance money, and set it under his most beautiful sunset.
★ 8.2
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1840s
1840 – 1849
Showing 5 artworks from the 1840s
Fur Traders Descending the Missouri
1845 · Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
A trapper and his son drift downriver at first light with a chained animal at the prow, the water so still it doubles them.
★ 7.2
The Desperate Man (Self-portrait)
1845 · Private collection
Courbet at twenty-six, lunging at the viewer with both hands in his hair and his eyes wide. Half self-portrait, half performance.
★ 6.5
Takiyasha the Witch and the Skeleton Spectre
1844 · British Museum, London
One vast skeleton pushes through a torn bamboo blind, where the convention had always been crowds of small phantoms. Three sheets wide.
★ 6.5
Raftsmen Playing Cards
1847 · Saint Louis Art Museum (Saint Louis), St. Louis
Rivermen break off work for a card game on a flatboat, arranged with a stillness that lifts the scene toward history painting.
★ 5.4