Joseph Mallord William Turner, Life-Boat and Manby Apparatus Going off to a Stranded Vessel Making Signal (Blue Lights) of Distress, Exhibited at the Royal Academy 1831, Oil on canvas, 36 x 48 in. (91.4 x 122 cm), Victoria & Albert Museum Collection
In addition to looking across history, through epic works such as Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps (1812), British Romantic artist J.M.W. Turner frequently turned his painterly eye towards technologies and inventions shaping his own moment. The speeding railroad was a subject that particularly thrilled Turner. Another was the Manby apparatus, a lifesaving device consisting of a rope fired from a mortar, which we see featured in this dramatic maritime scene of a stranded vessel. The apparatus was invented by Captain George Manby, after a devastating shipwreck in 1807 at Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, and was responsible for saving hundreds of lives over the next several decades. Spurred by his concern for safety issues, the captain would go on to invent the first modern form of the fire extinguisher as well. In 1831, the year that Turner’s painting was exhibited at London’s Royal Academy, Manby was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society, in recognition of his achievements and contributions to British society.