
by J.M.W. Turner, 1839
J.M.W. Turner painted The Fighting Temeraire in 1839, depicting a legendary warship being towed to the breaker's yard. The Temeraire had fought heroically at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, but now a squat black tugboat pulls the pale ghost of the old ship toward demolition. A blazing sunset fills the sky with orange and gold.
The work an elegy for the age of sail. Steam power was replacing wind, industry was transforming Britain, and Turner saw the grand old warship as a symbol of a vanishing world. He called it "my darling" and refused to sell it during his lifetime. The Romantic master built the composition around the contrast between the ghostly white ship and the belching black tug, past glory surrendering to industrial progress.
British voters named it the nation's favorite painting in a 2005 BBC poll. Turner bequeathed his unsold works to the nation, and The Fighting Temeraire has hung at The National Gallery in London since 1856.
Voted Britain's greatest painting in a 2005 poll, it symbolizes the passing of the age of sail.

Francesco Guardi
National Gallery, London

Claude Monet
National Gallery, London

Rembrandt van Rijn
National Gallery, London

Raphael
National Gallery, London
Other masterpieces from the Romanticism movement

Eugène Delacroix, 1827
Louvre, Paris, Paris

Eugène Delacroix, 1834
Louvre, Paris, Paris

Francisco Goya, 1800
Museo del Prado, Madrid, Madrid

Francisco Goya, 1814
Museo del Prado, Madrid, Madrid

Francisco Goya, 1800
Museo del Prado, Madrid, Madrid

Francisco Goya, 1823
Museo del Prado, Madrid, Madrid

Francisco Goya, 1823
Museo del Prado, Madrid, Madrid

John Constable, 1821
National Gallery, London
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