This picture formed a pair with Peace: Burial at Sea, also shown on this wall. The pictures are contrasted in theme and colouring. War shows Napoleon, exiled on St Helena. His body had just been taken from the island to Paris for state burial when Turner painted the picture.Napoleon had been a favourite subject of the painter BR Haydon and a hero of Turner’s friend, the architect John Soane. In verses accompanying the picture Turner equated its ‘sunset colour’ with blood, shed by Napoleon’s wars. He also compared the ‘tent-formed shell’ of the limpet with a ‘soldier’s nightly bivouac’.