J.M.W.TURNER

This picture is perhaps the best known of all Turner’s pictures, and it is one which, like “Crossing the Brook,” appeals to all. In these two works—one the most perfect work of his earliest, as the other of his latest style—he touched, as he rarely did, the common heart of mankind. Apart from particular associations, there is an eternal pathos in an old ship being tugged to its last berth in calm water at sunset. It is not necessary to tell the story of how the good ship was captured from the French at the battle of the Nile, and broke the line of the combined fleets at that of Trafalgar; nor is it necessary to think of her battered hulk as a type of the old sailing “wooden walls,” so soon to be replaced by ironclads and steam propellers—of the “old order” which “changeth, giving place to new.” It is a poem without all this, though all this gives additional interest and pathos to it in our eyes. Considered even in relation to the artist, this picture has a peculiar solemnity: he, as well as the Térnéraire, was being “tugged to his last berth ;“ he had still many years of life, but his decline as an artist had commenced, and was painfully perceptible in most of his pictures; occasionally his genius rallied, and this was one of its expiring efforts, the last picture which, according to Mr. Ruskin, he painted with his perfect power

Turner referred to this painting as "My Darling", and refused to sell it. I think this is my all time favourite painting

When this painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in I839 its title was accompanied in the catalogue by these lines from Thomas Campbell's ` Ye Mariners of England' 

The flag which braved the battle and the breeze,
No longer owns her. 

The passing of the age of sail into steam-ships, iron vessels, indeed the industrial revolution, coincided with great artist like Turner and John Constable painting both the old idyllic landscape with castles, abbeys and scenes of the past age alongside steam trains, boats and industrial changes as exciting them days as computer in our time.

The pinnacle of Constables paintings 'The Haywain' is set undeniably in the past. Turner's 'The Fighting Temeraire' shows us the passing away of that time. A grand forty year old champion of the Battle of Trafalgar, being towed away to its last berth by a modern steam tug bellowing smoke.

Turner was seen on board a Margate steamer sketching the passage of the Temeraire upriver to Beatson's ship breaking yard at Rotherhithe on 6 September I838, although what he saw and what he painted are two different things. Thus we know from contemporary newspaper reports that the Temeraire was towed by two tugs, and another observer of the towing later testified that the painter invented the spectacular sunset. The Temeraire glorified for the last time by Turner's brushes, for in reality she is stripped of her masts, sail and rigging, all guns and useful parts are removed by the Admiralty as spares. The ship is to be stripped of its oak wood at the breaker's yard, the copper sold back to the Admiralty for £3000, the breaker having paid around £5500 for the hull. The Fighting Temeraire more