The Fighting Temeraire

The Fighting Temeraire, J. M. W. Turner
J. M. W. Turner, Public domain

An old sailing ship from the Battle of Trafalgar is towed by a small steam tug to be broken up. The sun is setting. Turner paints a farewell to an era.

The ship is pale as a ghost; the dark tug and the sunset carry the colour.

HMS Temeraire was a large British ship of the line with 98 guns. At the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 she came to the aid of Admiral Nelson’s flagship Victory and contributed to the victory. In 1838 the ship was sold and towed up the Thames to be broken up. Turner exhibited the painting at the Royal Academy in 1839. After the battle the ship had popularly become known as “the Fighting Temeraire” and had become a symbol of the Royal Navy’s glory days.

The full title is The Fighting Temeraire, tugged to her last berth to be broken up, 1838. The ship glides along, pale and ghostly, almost transparent. In front of her a small, dark steam tug puffs smoke from its funnel. On the right the sun sets in a violent eruption of orange, red and yellow. On the left a pale moon rises. It is as if the ship were already a memory.

Turner took liberties with reality. The ship’s masts and sails had already been removed when she was towed, but Turner painted her with masts. The light and the time of day were also chosen for the sake of mood rather than accuracy. Whether Turner actually saw the towing is uncertain. The painting should therefore be understood as a poetic interpretation, not as reportage.

The composition sets two opposites against each other. On the left are coolness, pallor and the old ship; on the right warmth, colour and the sunset. The little steamer has often been read as the industry of the new age replacing the era of sail and heroic history. The sunset heightens the sense of farewell. The glassy water reflects both the ship and the sky, and its stillness reinforces the solemn effect.

Turner worked in oil on canvas, alternating between thin, transparent layers and thick paint. The sun and the sky around it are painted with heavy impasto, while the ship is almost glazed in thin layers. Turner’s late style, with its loose forms and intense light, anticipates Impressionism. He was known for going beyond the Academy’s rules and attracted both admiration and criticism.

Turner never sold the painting. When he died in 1851 he bequeathed it, together with hundreds of other works, to the British nation. It hangs today in the National Gallery in London. As a result of his bequest, a very large part of his life’s work is now in public collections in London, above all at the National Gallery and Tate Britain.

In 2005 the painting was voted Britain’s greatest painting in a poll organised by the BBC. Since 2020 it has appeared on the back of the Bank of England twenty-pound note together with Turner’s self-portrait. It has become a symbol of loss, memory and technological change.