It's a master work, depicting a distant ship in churning seas at sunset, bodies cast overboard are scattered like flotsam left in the sea to perish.
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And although it was painted more than 170 years ago, J.M.W.Turner's The Slave Ship may still have important things to tell us about our treatment of asylum seekers today.
Australian National University's Professor Desmond Manderson said the work, not included in the recent Australian National Gallery Turner exhibition, allows Australians to reflect on how images of overt suffering affect our engagement with asylum seeker tragedies at sea.
''Images of suffering whitewash us out of the picture,'' he said.
''The Turner shows us the power of sentiment. It also shows the limitations of sentiment and shows us what sentimentality blinds us to.''
The Canberra academic argued, like Turner in the 19th century, the sense of pity and distress we feel blinds us to our own responsibility, and from thinking critically about the causes. ''For a long time we have tried to make people aware of rhetoric and persuasion. We haven't done it so well for images that people are presented,'' Professor Manderson said.
Not considered a political artist, Turner first exhibited this painting in 1840 and hit a political nerve in the humanitarian debate of his milieu - the abolition of slavery.
Some of Turner's peers suggested the picture commoditised human suffering. Others felt it failed to recognise the complicity of colonising and slave-owning nations in dehumanising others.
Australia's Asylum Seeker Resource Centre campaign co-ordinator Pamela Curr said the characteristic dehumanisation used to deny the personhood of slaves in Turner's time, occurs now with our treatment of asylum seekers.
''They are not seen to be like us,'' Ms Curr said. ''I think it's partly because they have been portrayed as doing something illegal and taking advantage of something they are not entitled to. Their humanity is diminished.'' Ms Curr said looking back at denials of human rights across history has worked to re-engage debate and create change and in the past. The familiarity of this scene reminds us that our societies might not be as civilised as we would like to think.
''To use the artwork of the 19th century is very sadly all too relevant,'' she said. ''The inhumanity of the past is being repeated today.''
Refugee Council of Australia chief executive officer Paul Power said the greatest risk is the rise of indifference to suffering in the Australian debate.
''Our senses are assaulted by the volume of information about people who have undergone calamities,'' he said.
Mr Power says his organisation is always looking at ways to create broader social understanding of this complex human issue.
''What we see is the most influential way is to hear directly from those who have sought asylum, who have protection now, he said. ''They prove the most effective advocates for today's asylum seekers.''
