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In Turner and the Slave Trade, art historian Sam Smiles argues that J. M. W. Turner’s 1840 painting The Slave Ship almost certainly does not depict the Zong massacre. The book also examines Turner’s 1805 investment in a Jamaican cattle farm worked by enslaved Africans and considers how slavery shaped his career and British art history.
Art historian Sam Smiles’s 2026 book argues that J. M. W. Turner’s celebrated painting The Slave Ship almost certainly does not depict the 1781 Zong massacre, challenging a long-standing association while examining the painter’s own financial ties to Jamaican slavery. The reassessment matters because the painting has become a touchstone in debates about Romantic art, colonial wealth and museums’ treatment of slavery.
In Turner and the Slave Trade, Smiles considers the painting’s history and Turner’s evolving ethics. The work was shown at the Royal Academy in 1840 under the title Slavers Throwing overboard the Dead and the Dying–Typhoon Coming On. It depicts enslaved people cast into the sea amid a storm. The review says Smiles regards a direct reference to the Zong massacre as almost certainly incorrect, even as he reads the painting as evidence of Turner’s changing ethical outlook.
The book also revisits Turner’s finances. Smiles examines an 1805 investment of £100 in a consortium funding a Jamaican cattle farm operated by an enslaved African workforce. The review reports that Smiles first identified this investment in 2007. It says he finds no contradiction between Turner’s investment and his artistic career, arguing that the arrangement reflects how slavery underwrote wealth in England, including through absentee colonial ownership.
The reviewer connects the reassessment to the painting’s afterlife in art history. Its image of Black people, including a prominently visible shackled leg, has been read as a condemnation of slavery and associated with the Zong. The review says that this interpretation has made the painting synonymous with the massacre, while Smiles’s book brings the association into question. The author also addresses museums and the global Black Lives Matter movement, and the review credits him with avoiding offensive terms and gratuitous images except where needed for analysis.
Turner’s Wealth and the Slave Trade
The book places two questions beside each other: what Turner’s painting represents and how the artist benefited from a system of enslavement. That pairing complicates readings of Romantic landscape painting as separate from colonial power. Smiles’s account, as described in the review, treats slavery as part of the economic structure that supported British wealth rather than as a distant subject that artists encountered only in images.
The distinction over the Zong matters for public interpretation. If the painting is not a depiction of that specific massacre, its significance does not disappear; instead, viewers may need to distinguish its broader engagement with the slave trade from a particular historical event. That distinction affects how the work is discussed in galleries, classrooms and scholarship.
The review also situates the argument amid continuing claims about the legacies of slavery. It mentions Jamaicans petitioning King Charles for reparations in London on September 7, though it does not specify the year or the petition’s outcome. The book’s scrutiny of Turner’s investment therefore intersects with present-day debates about historical responsibility and cultural institutions, without resolving those debates.
J. M. W. Turner The Slave Ship print
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From 1840 Exhibition to New Reading
Turner first exhibited the painting at the Royal Academy in 1840. Its original title explicitly described slavers throwing people overboard as a typhoon approached. Over time, the work became widely linked to the Zong massacre, in which 133 enslaved Africans were killed after being thrown overboard in 1781. The review’s writer describes a personal connection to Black River, Jamaica, where the Zong docked after the killings, and says that connection shaped the writer’s own earlier understanding of the painting.
Smiles is an emeritus art historian at the University of Plymouth and co-curated Tate’s 2014 traveling exhibition Late Turner: Painting Set Free. His earlier discovery of Turner’s Jamaican investment challenged a popular view of the artist, according to the review. The 2026 book extends that inquiry beyond one canvas to the artist’s finances, the slave trade and museum interpretation.
The review also notes that Turner remains prominent in British culture, including through the Turner Prize and his appearance on British £20 banknotes. It refers to scholar Paul Gilroy’s brief discussion of the painting in The Black Atlantic (1993). These references show why disputes over the painting’s meaning reach beyond attribution: Turner’s reputation shapes how the country remembers its art and its colonial past.
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Evidence Behind the Zong Link
The review reports Smiles’s conclusion that the painting is almost certainly not a reference to the Zong massacre, but it does not lay out the full evidence behind that assessment. The painting’s exact subject and intended meaning therefore remain matters of scholarly interpretation in the material provided. The account also does not establish whether Turner intended the work as a direct condemnation of slavery.
The source gives the investment amount in 1805 pounds and an approximate modern equivalent, but does not specify the method or date used for that conversion. It also provides no details about the consortium’s structure, Turner’s returns or the duration of his involvement. The year of the September 7 reparations petition is not stated, and its status is unclear.
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Debate Over Turner’s Legacy
The book review brings Smiles’s reassessment into current discussion; it does not report a scheduled exhibition, institutional response or new archival release. Readers seeking to assess the argument will need the book’s full account of the evidence on the painting and the Jamaican investment. The next developments in this debate may come through scholarship, museum interpretation and public discussion of Turner’s place in Britain’s history.
historical books on Jamaican slavery
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Key Questions
What does Sam Smiles argue about The Slave Ship?
Smiles argues that Turner’s 1840 painting almost certainly does not refer to the Zong massacre. The review says he still reads the painting as part of Turner’s evolving ethical outlook.
What was Turner’s connection to Jamaican slavery?
The review says Smiles examines Turner’s £100 investment in 1805 in a consortium funding a Jamaican cattle farm operated by an enslaved African workforce.
How many people died in the Zong massacre?
The review states that 133 enslaved Africans were thrown overboard and killed in 1781.
Does the review settle what Turner intended?
No. It describes Smiles’s interpretation but does not provide the full evidence or establish Turner’s precise intention for the painting.
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