Fifth Plague Of Egypt Analysis

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During the Romantic Movement of the 1800’s in Europe, many notable artisans of both visual and auditory disciplines imbued emotion, mastery, and, in many cases, themselves in their work. Joseph Mallord William Turner, or more commonly known as J. M. W. Turner, is a perfect catalyst for comprehending the movement and it’s core values of putting emotion over objectivity to speak to the soul of the viewer rather than simply their eyes. His style of painting consists of portraying landscapes and adding color or elements to further build upon the feeling of the area, with one of his most ambitious works being the Fifth Plague of Egypt, which was regarded as nothing short of a flawless masterpiece by onlookers and critics alike. The work in question, …show more content…

Pantheism, in layman’s terms, is the idea of God being in all, especially nature that was the focus of a lot of praise during this time. By representing one of the scariest images of history, God’s wrath, the painting incites fear in viewers when they first marveled at it, and brought back the sense of religious pride that was largely absent in the Industrial Revolution. Just like the Egyptians, the people in higher social classes were essentially enslaving the working class through poor wages and degrading work, which makes the work a precaution to not allow history to repeat itself and open the gates for pure and utter chaos. Seeing as his work clearly shows nature completely wiping out modernization, it calls for people to stop the rapid expansion of Industrialization to conserve the God-given Earth all of humankind has, is, and will inhabit. All of this when pieced together, makes The Fifth Plague of Egypt a socialist message that screams in great volume that the only path to salvation for the damned Europeans is to push for equality of all with great zeal, and protect Mother Nature from the grips of greed and sin, making Turner a talented artisan and an equally talented intellectual, capable of combining new progression and old ideology to create this

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