Despite John Martin’s shared interest with Turner in the sublime, Turner saw more ‘Godly’ power in nature, once declaring on his deathbed ‘The Sun is God’. This reverence towards nature is indicated by the subject of ships and sea within which he handles the depiction of light and shade. Notice the shafts of falling light which dramatise the force and spectacle of nature.
The viewer, like the figures engulfed in darkness on the ships, feels an overwhelming sense of nature’s ability to reduce the human form to diminutive proportions.
