Page 53 - Exercise 2B

Page 53 - Exercise 2B

This painting is called the fighting Temeraire. Temeraire is the name of the big old sailing ship that you can see on the left of the picture. People voted this picture the greatest painting in Britain. JMW Turner painted it in 1839. It shows the old sailing ship, The Temeraire on the River Thames, near London. There’s a small tugboat pulling the old ship. Where is the tugboat taking the old ship, why? It’s actually taking the Temeraire on its last journey. The old ship is going to the breakers yard. In the background, we can see the sun setting. The picture, however, is more than just a painting of two boats in the evening. The artist wanted to show the end of an era. The time of the beautiful old sailing ships is coming to an end. That’s why we see this happening at sunset. In the little brown tugboat. We can see the new dirty industrial area starting. The tugboat is small and dark. And it’s making a lot of smoke. But it’s very strong because it’s pulling the much bigger ship. The painting shows a real event. Turner watched the Temeraire taking its last journey up the Thames. But he changed some of the details. He painted the old ship white and gold. So that it looks like a ghost. In fact, the real ship was black and yellow. We also see the sun setting behind the ship. But in reality, the ship traveled from east to west towards the sunset. However Turner wanted to show the sun setting on the time of the old sailing ships. Turner painted the fighting Temeraire when he was quite old. So perhaps he wanted to show the sun setting on his own life too. He loved the painting and he never sold it. You can see it today in the National Gallery in London.