The Fall of Anarchy: Politics and Anatomy in an Enigmatic Painting by J.M.W. Turner

The subject of Turner’s mysterious unfinished painting, known today as Death on a Pale Horse, is a problem that has baffled generations of scholars. It has been proposed that it is a response to the death of Turner’s father in 1829 or to the cholera outbreak of 1832 but these suggestions are at best circumstantial. This paper offers a new interpretation of this enigmatic painting, linking it principally to the cause of political Reform.