The Fighting Temeraire

What to look at

A ship that fought at Trafalgar is being towed up the Thames to be broken up for scrap, and Turner has arranged the facts to make the point land harder than the facts would on their own. The Temeraire is painted pale, nearly weightless, ghost-coloured, with her masts still standing — in reality she had been stripped of masts and rigging before the tow. The tug in front of her is small, black, squat and belching, and Turner puts its fire-lit funnel almost exactly where your eye enters the picture. The sun setting on the right is doing double duty as a sunset and as an obituary. He knew what he had: he refused to sell it for the rest of his life and called it his darling. Technically, note how thin the paint is in the sky and how thickly it is loaded on the sun and the water beneath it.