Turner's 'Fighting Temeraire': A Romanticized Final Voyage

J. M. W. Turner's 1839 painting 'Fighting Temeraire' depicts the HMS Temeraire's final journey along the Thames River to be broken up. The 98-gun warship had fought at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Turner took significant artistic liberties: he showed the ship fully rigged and majestic, though it was actually a stripped hull; he included only one tugboat instead of two; and he placed the setting sun behind the ship rather than before it. The work measures 90.7 by 121.6 cm and was exhibited at the 1839 Royal Academy Exhibition. Turner refused to sell it and bequeathed it to the nation upon his death in 1851. It remains at the National Gallery in London.