Turner was a cockney, the son of a barber,a smart man of the hard streets, part poet, all painter. on a daily basis he would have seen the hardships endured by his fellow citizens of Olde Londone Towne. I wonder if Turner was able to see the sky from those windy crowded alleyways? To see through to the sky high above while the dirty business of man continued all about him. I was thinking about the painting he did in later life; The Slave Ship.it shows a stormy sea and sky when stolen men and women go to a watery grave. Condemned there by the merciless hand of human commerce, something not found in brutal nature even. This is the floating Satanic Mill William Blake warned off, where abduction and murder were justified in pursuit of an insurance claim. The dirty business of man conducted beneath a roiling tumbling heavens, the mute non judgemental canopy of clouds. It is a remarkable painting by the standards of any century. Yet by all accounts it was not well received, with those who previously praised heaping scorn. Described by one critic as looking " ..like the contents of a spitoon.."
How startling this painting must have looked upon being revealed to a waiting public. What could they have goggled at in the National Gallery that would have prepared them for this assault on their feathery sensibilities? Was the proximity of an Edward Landseer comforting to them? Was it like being at a crowded family gathering and gravitating to the side of the uncle who does not insist on speaking his mind no matter how uncomfortable he makes you feel?
What would I know, its all new to me and I try not to project modernism into situations where no such spelling existed. I am relying on the instincts and phenomenal insights of writers such as Peter Ackroyd to act as tour guide through the haunted galleries of history. There are precedents, he has created a body of work which suggests no finer company on such a journey. This is a short book, a slight guide of sorts but it has pushed open a door for me through which I see a daisy chain dangled above a blazing home hearth, a fragile thing off beauty suspended above coppery cinders.
...Combined with an irresistible urge to look up.
