Turner: Art, Industry & Nostalgia – an “ambitious and moving” show

JMW Turner’s 1839 painting The Fighting Temeraire is regularly described as “one of the nation’s greatest treasures,” according to Barbara Hodgson in The Chronicle. The work depicts the “final voyage” of HMS Temeraire in 1838, as the once-mighty warship is towed down the Thames to the shipyard where it will be scrapped. The painting is often seen as a romantic elegy to the age of sail: against the backdrop of a fiery sunset, the ghostly veteran of the Battle of Trafalgar is led to his end by a small Tyneside-built steam-wheeled tug – a harbinger of the industrial change to come.

It is fitting, then, that the painting has been brought from London to Newcastle this summer, where it forms the centrepiece of an exhibition about Turner’s links with the North East and the way the region’s shipbuilding industry has been portrayed over the years. Comprising more than 25 works by Turner himself, a variety of maritime scenes by his contemporaries and works by modern artists, the exhibition offers the opportunity to see a ‘masterpiece’ in a completely different context.