There are only few pictures in the world that make my heart sink. Turner’s harrowingly beautiful Regulus definitely leads that list. Turner was always one of my favorite artists, even before I met the Regulus. I admire his devoted attitude toward his work. Once he asked sailors to tie him up to a ship’s mast just to go through a storm on the sea. He wanted to know what a storm would feel like, so he was tied up there for four hours during the storm. Stories like this mesmerize me.
London’s Tate Gallery is a temple of Turner fanatics. Here hangs the Regulus. When I met the painting for the first time, I did not know about Regulus, who he was and what he did. I just watched the golden yellow color’s wondrous power on the picture. It magnetizes the viewer’s gaze like the white passage when you are going to die.
I was hypnotized by the bright force but I could not puzzle the connection between the title and the painting. What was Regulus? A latin word I should know? Or was he a person? But there is no main figure in the picture!
Then I found out that Marcus Atilius Regulus was a Roman consul and soldier who defeated the Carthaginians in 256 B.C., but later was captured by them. The Carthaginians sent him back to Rome to negotiate a peace treaty or prisoner exchange, but he probably rather urged the Senate not to accept the conditions. He returned to Carthage even though he knew what was waiting for him; the angry captors tortured him to death.
They starved him and kept him in captivity with an elephant to trample him. The Carthaginians even cut his eyelids off and made him stand in a barrel full of nails, upon the burning sun of Carthage, knowing that he could not close his eyes. This beastly cruelty hurts even just writing about it. After I learned Regulus’ sad story, I understood the scene on the painting in an instant.
I dismayed because I realized that I was Regulus myself. I was standing there, exposed to the sun. I saw what Regulus saw while he was dying, unable to close his eyes or hide from the heat. That was why I could not see Regulus in the painting. Turner depicted the brutal scene from Regulus’ point of view so the viewers could feel his suffer themselves. Because you feel it. It burns. Like hell.
A painter creates stories and meanings with colors like poets use words. No need to paint the whole story to the canvas. Only picture it using colors so the audience can feel the rest. Like reading between the lines.
If I look at Turner’s painting I feel the breeze in the air. I hear the sound of the sea waves, and I burn on the sun along with Regulus. I stand beside him and we feel the sun searing our skin. We are looking into the deep golden yellow corridor, imagining walking on its reflection in the sea. The light eventually swallows us, relieving Regulus and me of the pain. We are heroes.
