Romanticism · 1839
J.M.W. Turner 1775–1851
National Gallery · London
A ghostly old warship is towed by a sooty steam tug to be broken up — Turner's elegy for the age of sail, dissolving in sunset.
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Chapter 1 of 7
What you are looking at is a farewell. Turner completed this in 1839, one year after the real HMS Temeraire was sold for scrap — a ship he had never actually seen towed at sunset. He invented the scene from grief and admiration, turning a newspaper notice into the most celebrated elegy in British painting.
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