[IMAGE: The Fighting Temeraire, by J. M. W. Turner]
![[IMAGE: The Fighting Temeraire, by J. M. W. Turner]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/30/The_Fighting_Temeraire%2C_JMW_Turner%2C_National_Gallery.jpg/1280px-The_Fighting_Temeraire%2C_JMW_Turner%2C_National_Gallery.jpg){kind=link}
The Fighting Temeraire
J. M. W. Turner, 1839
The Temeraire was a warship that had fought heroically at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. In 1838, worn out and obsolete, she was towed up the Thames to be broken up for scrap.
Turner turned the event into an elegy. The great old sailing ship glides pale and ghostly, pulled by a small, black, smoking steam tug. Behind them the sun sets in a blaze of fire across the sky.
He took some liberties — the ship's masts had already been removed — because he wasn't painting a record. He was painting a feeling: the passing of the age of sail, and of glory, into the age of steam.
In 2005, a BBC radio poll named it Britain's greatest painting. It also appears on the Bank of England £20 note, next to Turner's self-portrait.
Look for
- The ghostly pale warship
- The small, dark, smoking tug pulling her
- The blazing sunset — the end of an era