J.M.W. Turner by Eric Shanes

Author:Eric Shanes [Shanes, Eric]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Parkstone International

31. Ulysses deriding Polyphemus – Homer’s Odyssey, 1829. Oil on canvas, 132.5 x 203 cm. Turner Bequest, National Gallery, London

In Book IX of Homer’s Odyssey, Odysseus – of which name Ulysses is the Latinized form – is trapped with twelve of his men in the cave of the one-eyed giant, the Cyclops. The monster eats two members of the crew every dawn and dusk. After getting their captor drunk, Ulysses and his remaining companions poke out his eye with a sharpened, heated stake. They then escape at dawn by clinging to the undersides of a flock of sheep and rams belonging to their gaoler.

At the top-left the blinded Cyclops clutches his head in one hand and waves in anger with the other; far below him Ulysses stands by the mizzenmast of his ship and ‘derides’ him in return. On the mainmast of the vessel a flag bears the name of Odysseus in Greek, while another banner represents the Trojan horse. To the left of the ship is a fiery cavern; this was surely intended to link the Cyclops to primordial subterranean forces, which in Turner’s day were considered to be the source of such mythical creatures.

Because some clouds on the horizon to the right of the sun are shaped to look like the heads of horses, the orb doubles as the sun-god Apollo being pulled aloft in his chariot. Turner probably borrowed the notion of these clouds/Apollonian horses’s heads from Poussin’s painting Cephalus and Aurora (National Gallery, London), in which they similarly appear. In shape the heads themselves clearly derive from an equine head that once adorned the east pediment of the Parthenon, which Turner knew from the Elgin marbles. At the prow of Ulysses’s vessel phosphorescent nereids hold aloft stars, Phosphorus being the son of Aurora (who symbolizes Dawn), and thus the personification of the morning star. The luminescence indicates Turner’s continuing interest in all types of visual phenomena. His enduring love of reflected light may be seen in the gorgeous colours arrayed across the shadowed side of Ulysses’s ship.

It is commonly assumed that Turner represented the actual escape of Ulysses here, but that is incorrect. When Ulysses escapes, the Cyclops hurls huge boulders after him into the sea but such rocks are not visible, although the great rock-arches in the distance might allude to them. Instead, the Greek hero is now following his fleet, as we can see from the ships on the right and their wakes running across the bottom of the image. The timing is therefore dawn on the day after the escape of Ulysses, which is the precise time given by Homer for the hero’s departure from the land of the Cyclops.

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