‘If my eyes left grooves in the cleft of your rupture they would look like this.’

Kate Howe, 2021, oil paint and oil pastel on canvas, 160 x 200 cm.
Collection: Turner, Painting.

Fallacies of Hope*

Aloft all hands, strike the top-masts and belay;
Yon angry setting sun and fierce-edged clouds
Declare the Typhoon’s coming.
Before it sweeps your decks, throw overboard
The dead and dying – ne’er heed their chains
Hope, Hope, fallacious Hope!
Where is thy market now? -JMWTurner

*Composition date unknown. Sections of this poem accompanied several of Turner’s paintings when he exhibited them. This piece certainly accompanied Slavers Throwing overboard the Dead and Dying—Typhoon coming on, exhibited in 1840 at the Royal Academy