Rise and Fall

JMW Turner spent much of his life painting the riverscape of the Thames and had a particular fascination for the little steamships and tugboats that began to appear in the early 19th century. Consider one of his greatest works, The Fighting Temeraire 1839, which was voted Britain’s favourite painting several years ago in a BBC radio poll. In its own time, the Royal Navy ship HMS Temeraire was beloved for its role in the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar, but by 1838, a year before Turner exhibited his painting at the Royal Academy, it had been sold off and towed up the Thames to be scrapped. Its eventual demise at the breakers’ yard was seen as a tragedy for this once-heroic vessel, and the painting has often been considered a nostalgic nod to the end of the grand age of sail and its role in the formation of the British Empire.

However, Turner’s early years and his interest in life along the river may suggest a different reading. According to art historian Matthew Wilson, the painting could, instead, have been forward-looking, heralding a new technological era. The Fighting Temeraire keeps the steam-powered tugboat in clear focus, a stark black against the faded, dreamlike presence of the Temeraire itself. As the warship approached the breakers’ yard upstream to the west, was the sun setting on the golden age of the British Empire, or was it rising on a modern industrial one?

In what Turner described as the ‘first sketch’ for his painting, Steamer and Lightship; a study for ‘The Fighting Temeraire ’ c.1838–9, the feted sailing ship’s presence is almost imperceptible, even more ghostly and distant, while the coal-fired vessel’s smoking chimney is defiantly marked out in a dark, loose gestural brushstroke. The churning waters, with their washed-out hues of marine green and grey, situate us in the Thames Estuary by the Nore sandbank and its attendant lightship.

Turner, who painted this work in his sixties, with almost 40 years of success behind him, was born into relatively humble circumstances in Covent Garden, and while he enjoyed early success as an artist surrounded by some of London’s most influential figures, he remained close to his working-class roots. He would have been aware of the harsh working conditions experienced by dock labourers and sailors alike, perhaps imagining that a leap forward in industry would ring positive changes for these men too – one that promised a different destiny for the labourers of the old Empire.

^{Steamer and Lightship; a study for ‘The Fighting Temeraire' was accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest in 1856.}

^{Shiraz Bayjoo is a Mauritian artist living in London.}