Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
at Midnight, on the 30th of April, 1812, from a Sketch Taken at
the Time by Hugh P. Keane, Esqre
, was made not from his own
observation but from a sketch, so far untraced, which was drawn
by the barrister and sugar plantation owner Hugh Perry Keane.
Turner was, as the title indicates, at pains to show that the paint-
ing was not an eyewitness account, but he nevertheless instilled
an extraordinary sense of drama into this night scene seared by
the blazing light and violence of the eruption. There is no other
trace of Keane in Turner's surviving correspondence or literature,
so it is not clear how they met. It has however come to light that
Turner had financial interests in West Indian slavery in the 1810s
and early 1820s, and it is possible that this common interest may
have brought the two men together, however briefly.³¹ While
Keane's drawing does not survive, his diaries do, and in them he
gives a brief but vivid real-time account of what he saw:
Wed 29 April 1812: . . . On to see Souffrier, involved in
dark clouds, and vomiting black smoke. Thurs 30: . . . in
the afternoon the roaring of the mountain increased and at
7 o'clock the Flames burst forth, and the dreadful Eruption
began. All night watching it - between 2 and 5 o'clock in
the morning, showers of Stones and Earthquakes threat-
ened our immediate Destruction. Fri 1 May: . . . The whole
Island involved in gloom … The mountain was quiet all
night . . . Sun 3: . . . a strange and dismal sight, the River
dried up, & the Land covered with Cinders and Sulphur
. . . burnt carcasses of cattle lying everywhere . . . Wed 6:
. . . The Volcano again blazed away from 7 till ½ past 8.
Thurs 7: Rose at 7. Drawing the eruption.³²
This was probably the drawing that came Turner's way, and with
it and perhaps conversation with Keane as inspiration Turner
drew his own vivid word picture in a poem that shakes under
its own powerful internal energy:
Then in stupendous horror grew
The red volcano to the view
