At first glance it seems a rather benign, pretty photograph of a pastoral scene and out of place in a new show on British history painting. The work’s title and the artist responsible reveal more. It is called Lynching Tree and it was taken by Steve McQueen in 2013 when he was scouting locations for his film 12 Years a Slave.
Previously used as a backdrop for Kanye West when he performed at the MTV video music awards two years ago, the work is going on public display in the UK for the first time as part of a new show at Tate Britain exploring British history painting.
It is a subject some people might see as dusty and old fashioned. Not at all, said curator Greg Sullivan, who has juxtaposed more traditional 18th and 19th-century British history paintings with contemporary works such as the McQueen to argue its relevance.
The show covers 250 years, with works tackling subjects from William Pitt’s collapse in the House of Lords in 1778 to the poll tax riots of the Thatcher years. All of them were chosen because they are great works of art, Sullivan said.
“Each one of these is a story picture that tells its story well, you can get absorbed in it, you can have an emotional response to it and hopefully it will do the job it intended … inspire you to think about your place in the universe.”
McQueen’s tree, near New Orleans, was once used as gallows to hang slaves, and the ground contains numerous graves of lynched victims. It can be seen as a story of early 19th-century British imperialism as a direct image of atrocities in the deep south.
The Tate Britain show mostly features rarely seen works from its own collection, not least a huge painting from 1877 last on display in 1949: William Frederick Yeames’ Amy Robsart which dramatises the death of the wife of Lord Robert Dudley, Queen Elizabeth I’s favourite courtier. It is going on display after major restoration and shows in gleaming detail Robsart lying dead at the bottom of stone stairs, presumably pushed by a man hired by Dudley.
Her death is one of several in the show, Sullivan says, with the final room dedicated to works tackling the deluge, the biblical flood for which Noah built his ark. “History painters are often drawn to extremes,” he said. “I think I counted 30 bodies before humanity gets wiped out in the last room. We have got a very high death and body count in this exhibition.”
• Fighting History is at Tate Britain from 9 June to 13 September 2015.
