Death on a Pale Horse (1825-30) by J.M.W. Turner

[ukhudshanskiy]

The Book of Revelation in the Bible describes the Last Judgement, relating the appearance of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse who are presented as heralds ready to usher in the Day of Judgement. Although Turner seems to have left this work incomplete, the subject can be identified as Death, the last of the horsemen to appear. It has been suggested that he was prompted to paint this theme by the death of his father in 1829. Death appears like a phantom from the ether, his skeletal form lying prostrate across the white horse in the way that corpses were carried.