Just as America is about to put abolitionist heroine Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill, Britain will put painter J.M.W. Turner, who invested in a slave plantation, on its new 20 pound note.
Though a public and vocal abolitionist, Turner, whose artistic genius and popularity made him a wealthy man, invested some of his money in an Jamaican sugar plantation where the profits were based on slave labor.
Part of the rationale for the removal of President Andrew Jackson from the American twenty note was Jackson’s involvement in slavery. The U.S. will replace Jackson on the front with Harriet Tubman, of Underground Railroad fame, but Jackson will still appear on the back of the note.
So, at the same time America ditches memories of its slaveholder past, its neighbors across the Atlantic is, ironically, elevating a figure with a similar taint.
Turner is famous for his dramatic oil paintings and scenic watercolor paintings of landscapes. Turner famously painted “The Slave Ship” in 1840.
Historian Stephen J. May writes, “In his late twenties he was besieged by commissions and courted by several influential patrons. He was wealthy beyond his years… He quite naturally wanted to avoid the fate of his parents by investing his money wisely. One of these investments in a Jamaican sugar plantation worked by slaves was a shrewd business move, a frivolous youthful oversight, or an enormous moral blunder, depending on how one views it.”
“It was an investment that would trouble him all his life, eventually reaching into the very depths of his soul, and inevitably finding its way into his greatest painting — The Slave Ship… As the years passed, he felt a shared guilt about his own role and England’s role in condoning and perpetuating slavery’s malevolent legacy,” May continues.
