The Fighting Temeraire, J. M. W. Turner Postcard

The Fighting Temeraire Tugged to Her Last Berth to be Broken Up, 1839 by J. M. W. Turner ( Joseph Mallord William Turner ) The painting depicts one of the last second-rate ships of the line which played a distinguished role in the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, the 98-gun ship HMS Temeraire, being towed towards its final berth in east London in 1838 to be broken up for scrap. Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775 – 1851) was an English Romantic landscape painter, watercolourist and printmaker. Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, but is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting. Although renowned for his oil paintings, Turner is also one of the greatest masters of British watercolour landscape painting. He is commonly known as "the painter of light" and his work regarded as a Romantic preface to Impressionism. The painting hangs in the National Gallery, London, having been bequeathed to the nation by the artist in 1851. Sir Henry Newbolt wrote a fine ballad on this great ship (eponymously titled), referencing the scenario depicted, evocating its grand history: "And she's fading down the river, But in England's song for ever, She's the Fighting Téméraire."