First Born Plague
J. M. W. Turner·c. 1813
Historical Context
First Born Plague from around 1813 is one of Turner's biblical catastrophe subjects, depicting the death of the firstborn children of Egypt — the culminating plague of the Book of Exodus — within a monumental architectural setting. His biblical disaster paintings of the early 1810s engage with a tradition of sublime religious history painting that ran from Poussin through Claude-Joseph Vernet to John Martin, who was at exactly this period beginning to produce the vast apocalyptic canvases that would make his reputation. Turner's approach to such subjects was always more atmospheric than Martin's monumental figure-based compositions: where Martin filled his canvases with specific details of suffering and destruction, Turner dissolved the catastrophe into an overwhelming atmospheric event — divine judgment rendered as light and darkness rather than as depicted violence. The subject allowed him to explore extreme contrasts of supernatural illumination against monumental darkness on a scale that few secular subjects could justify.
Technical Analysis
Turner renders the apocalyptic subject with dramatic contrasts of light and darkness, using the supernatural illumination to create an atmosphere of divine terror and human devastation.
Look Closer
- ◆Look at the supernatural light of the plague — Turner renders the divine destruction with a livid, unnatural illumination that distinguishes the biblical catastrophe from natural light.
- ◆Notice the Egyptian architectural setting — the monumental scale of ancient Egyptian buildings providing a backdrop that makes the human suffering feel correspondingly small and overwhelmed.
- ◆Observe the dramatic contrast between the areas of supernatural light and the deep shadows that surround them — Turner uses this extreme chiaroscuro to create the atmosphere of divine judgment.
- ◆Find the human figures in extremis — the dead firstborn and their grieving families — Turner renders the personal human cost of the cosmic event with specific figures of grief.
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