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The Fighting Temeraire
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
| The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last Berth to be broken up |
| J. M. W. Turner, 1838 |
| Oil on canvas |
| 91 × 122 cm |
| National Gallery, London |
The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last Berth to be broken up is an 1838 painting by J. M. W. Turner.
The painting shows the 98-gun ship Temeraire, which played a distinguished role in the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar, being towed towards its final berth in east London in 1838 to be broken up.
In 2005 The Fighting Temeraire was voted the greatest painting in a British art gallery. The painting, which hangs in the National Gallery in London, won 31,892 votes, more than a quarter of the 118,111 cast in a poll organised by the BBC Today radio programmme. In second place was John Constable's The Hay Wain, Édouard Manet's A Bar at the Folies-Bergère was third, and The Arnolfini Portrait by Jan van Eyck was fourth. Any painting displayed in a British gallery was eligible for the vote.
While Turner was present when the ship was actually towed and made some sketches, the final painting and its title contains several (probably deliberate) inaccuracies:[1][2][3]
- before being broken up, the ship had been lying in the Chatham Dockyard as a hulk, and had no masts or rigging or other superstructure;
- the ship was being towed up the Thames River (westbound), so the sunset could not have been behind it;
- there were two steamboats towing the hull, rather than just the one in the painting;
- the painting portrays the ship's hull in good condition, but witnesses reported that it had deteriorated badly;
- the ship was actually known to her crew as the Saucy Temeraire rather than the Fighting Temeraire.