Turner's "The Fighting Temeraire".

For me this is a very moving painting. It is on the surface a recorded document of a famous ship, with a history of it's own, that of being a pivotal part in the battle of Trafalgar, being towed into decommission by a modern steam vessel, the last of it's kind and a full stop at the end of an era. The ships fate is sealed, it is to be broken up it's usefulness now having passed, but really it seems to be as much about a sixty year old Joseph William Turner at the peak of his craft coming to terms with the transience of his own life. The ghost like vessel is almost an apparition and painting itself is undergoing a re-evaluation and revolution now that the mechanical age is dawning. His apptitude in capturing something as ethereal and ever changing as light with a paint brush is as remarkable as his amazing apptitude in making us care so much about an inanimate object.