Turner and the Whale by Jason Edwards

Author:Jason Edwards
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781784422868
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2017-03-17T04:00:00+00:00

CONCLUSION: TURNER AND THE WHALERS

Turner’s complex quartet of Whalers, then, raise as many questions as they answer. Turner seems to identify as much, if not more, with his whaler, polar explorer and natural historian peers, as he does with his whales, whatever his critics say, and however much we would prefer this not to be the case. The painter’s peers were faced with a difficult decision, as his canvases make clear: to accept the suffering and death of their mammal cousins, whose oil would keep their economy lubricated, illuminated and afloat, or to choose an even more filthy world, marked by an even larger carbon footprint. We face a similar choice ourselves. As we look towards the middle of the twenty-first century and beyond, which forms of energy do we prioritise, and, with global meat consumption reckoned to double by 2050, which birds and mammals are we happy to cherish, and which to let perish to satisfy our violent, needlessly carnivorous pleasures?

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