A Disaster at Sea

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Wikipedia

A Disaster at Sea
ArtistJ. M. W. Turner
Yearc.1835
TypeOil on canvas, landscape painting
Dimensions171.4 cm × 220.3 cm (67.5 in × 86.7 in)
LocationTate Britain, London

A Disaster at Sea is a c. 1835 seascape painting by the British artist J.M.W. Turner.[1] It depicts a ship floundering at sea with those on board clinging desperately to the sinking vessel. The painting was never exhibited in Turner's lifetime and is likely to be unfinished, although by the latter stages of Turner's carer his Romantic style became increasingly abstract and impressionist.[2]

The work is generally held to be inspired by the loss of Amphitrite, a vessel carrying convicts being transported to Australia, off Boulogne in August 1833. It has also been suggested that it may have been based on Hibernia, a ship that caught fire in the Atlantic Ocean with too few lifeboats on board.[3]

Stylistically and the thematically the painting draws on the 1819 work The Raft of the Medusa by Théodore Géricault which Turner had seen when it was displayed in London in the early 1820s.[4] The painting was part of the Turner Bequest to the United Kingdom in 1856. It is now part of the collection of the Tate Britain in Pimlico.[5]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Delgado p.49
  2. ↑ "The Art of the Sublime: A Disaster at Sea ?c.1835". The Tate. Retrieved 9 November 2025.
  3. ↑ "A Disaster at Sea". The Tae. Retrieved 9 November 2025.
  4. ↑ Thompson p.126
  5. ↑ "A Disaster at Sea". ART UK. Retrieved 9 November 2025.

Bibliography

  • Bailey, Anthony. J.M.W. Turner: Standing in the Sun. Tate Enterprises, 2013.
  • Delgado, James P.The Great Museum of the Sea: A Human History of Shipwrecks. Oxford University Press, 2025.
  • Reynolds, Graham. Turner. Thames & Hudson, 2022.
  • Thompson, Carl. Shipwreck in Art and Literature: Images and Interpretations from Antiquity to the Present Day. Taylor & Francis, 2014.