The Fighting Temeraire, 1839
J. M. W. Turner
Oil on canvas · 90.7 x 121.6 cm
An old warship is towed to the scrapyard past a molten sunset.
Turner shows a ghostly old warship, hero of Trafalgar, towed to be broken up by a squat, smoking steam tug beneath a blazing sunset. It is an elegy for the age of sail — voted Britain's greatest painting, and unbearably poignant.
What you're looking at
Turner cheated the geography and the ship. The Temeraire was towed upriver to the west, so the sun should not be setting behind her at all, and he painted her far taller, paler and more intact than she was — masts stripped, she was a hulk. She is a ghost by intention. The only hot colour near the centre is the tug's stubby black funnel with its flare of fire, set against all that cold silver. Turner kept the painting for the rest of his life and turned down offers for it.
On a Frame TV
About 4:3, so the clean crop trims sky and water at the edges of a composition that needs the width; the matted file is safer. Enormous tonal range, from the molten right-hand side to near-white on the left, which is exactly the sort of gradient a good panel renders better than paper does.
National Gallery · Visit it in London →
- 4K master file (3840px+)
- Samsung Frame TV–ready crop
- Phone wallpaper crop
- Printable art card
Public domain · one .zip, no sign-up
More like this
Other works in the collection, starting with J. M. W. Turner.
