Turner: Art, Industry & Nostalgia – an ‘ambitious and moving’ show

J.M.W. Turner’s 1839 painting “The Fighting Temeraire” is regularly cited as “one of the nation’s greatest treasures”, said Barbara Hodgson in The Chronicle. The work depicts the H.M.S. Temeraire’s “final journey” in 1838, as the once-mighty warship is towed down the Thames towards the yard where it will be broken up for scrap. The painting is often seen as a romantic elegy for the age of sail: set against a blazing sunset, the ghostly veteran of the Battle of Trafalgar is being guided to its end by a small, Tyneside-built steam paddle tug – a harbinger of the industrial transformation to come.

So it is fitting that, this summer, the painting has been transported from London to Newcastle, where it forms the centrepiece of an exhibition about Turner’s links to the Northeast and the ways in which the region’s shipbuilding industry has been depicted over the years. Consisting of more than 25 works by Turner himself, a host of maritime scenes by his contemporaries and works by modern artists, it offers an opportunity to see a “masterpiece” in a completely different context.