Oil on canvas · Exhibited 1839 · The National Gallery
The Fighting Temeraire: Turner's 1839 Painting of a Warship's End
A veteran of Trafalgar, hauled upriver by a steam tug to be dismantled for timber. Turner exhibited it in 1839, refused every offer for it, and left it to the nation.
What The Fighting Temeraire shows
A ninety-eight-gun ship of the line rides high and pale on the Thames, stripped of everything that made her a warship. A small steam tug, black-funnelled and throwing fire, pulls her towards the breaker's yard. The sun goes down behind them in a wash of scarlet and gold, and a cold moon has already risen on the left.
| Artist | Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) |
|---|---|
| Date | 1839 |
| Exhibited | Royal Academy, 1839 |
| Medium | Oil paint on canvas |
| Dimensions | 908 x 1216 mm |
| Collection | The National Gallery, London |
| Accession number | NG524 |
The contrast is the whole argument of the picture. The old ship is painted in chalky whites and ghostly ivory, almost weightless, more apparition than timber. The tug is small, dark, solid and unlovely, and it is the thing with the power. Turner sets the two against each other and lets the viewer draw the conclusion.
The ship and the Trafalgar record
The Temeraire was real, and her reputation was earned. At Trafalgar in October 1805 she came to the aid of Nelson's Victory, engaged two French ships, and took both. The action made her famous in Britain and gave her the epithet that stuck to her name for the rest of the century, long after she had stopped going to sea.
By 1838 she had spent years in harbour service and was sold out of the Navy. In September of that year she was towed from Sheerness to Beatson's yard at Rotherhithe to be broken up for her timber. The tow was reported in the press, and the sight of it evidently reached Turner, who exhibited his painting the following spring.
What Turner changed in the painting
The painting is not a record of what happened on the river. The Temeraire had been stripped of her masts before the tow began, so the tall spars Turner gives her were never there to be seen. Two tugs did the work instead of one, and the ship went upriver to the west, putting his sunset in the wrong quarter.
None of this was carelessness. Turner knew ships better than almost any painter alive and had drawn the Temeraire's own quarterdeck from life in 1805. He restored her masts because a hulk cannot carry the meaning he wanted, and he put the sun where the composition needed it. The picture is an argument about time, not a report.
Turner exhibited it in 1839 and would not sell it
He exhibited the canvas at the Royal Academy in 1839 and then kept it. Buyers approached him and he turned them down, reportedly calling the painting his darling. It stayed in his possession for the remaining twelve years of his life and came to the nation with the rest of the Turner Bequest after his death in 1851.
That refusal tells you something about how he rated it. Turner was a shrewd and commercially successful painter who priced his work carefully and sold a great deal of it. The pictures he held back were the ones he wanted to be judged by, and this was among the very few he would not part with at any figure.
How the painting has been read
The usual reading is the obvious one: sail gives way to steam, and an age ends. That reading was available immediately and contemporary viewers took it. Thackeray wrote about the picture in those terms, and the pairing of a luminous old ship with a squat black tug has been doing the same work in the public imagination ever since.
It is worth noticing what complicates it. Turner was not hostile to steam, and he painted steamboats repeatedly without elegy. Five years later he made the machine the hero in Rain, Steam and Speed. The Temeraire is less a protest against the new than a picture about how completely the old disappears once it stops being useful.
Where to see it
The painting hangs in the National Gallery in London, where it came as part of the Turner Bequest. It was voted the nation's favourite painting in a public poll run by BBC Radio 4 in 2005, and it appeared on the reverse of the Bank of England twenty-pound note issued in 2020, alongside a portrait of the painter.
Questions
Is The Fighting Temeraire an accurate record of the tow?
No, and deliberately not. The ship had been stripped of her masts before the tow, two tugs were used instead of the single one Turner shows, and the vessel went upriver to the west, which places the sunset in the wrong part of the sky. Turner had drawn the real ship from life and knew exactly what he was altering.
Why did Turner refuse to sell the painting?
He kept it for the last twelve years of his life and turned down the buyers who approached him, reportedly calling it his darling. Turner sold most of what he painted and priced it carefully, so the small group of pictures he held back is telling. It came to the nation with the Turner Bequest after his death.
What was the real Temeraire famous for?
She was a ninety-eight-gun second-rate ship of the line that fought at Trafalgar in October 1805, where she went to the support of Nelson's Victory and engaged and took two French ships. That single action made her name in Britain, and it was still attached to her more than thirty years later when she was sold out of the Navy.
Where can I see The Fighting Temeraire?
It is in the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, London, which received it as part of the Turner Bequest. The painting is among the best known in the collection, it topped a BBC Radio 4 poll of the nation's favourite paintings in 2005, and it was chosen for the reverse of the twenty-pound note issued in 2020.