During the late eighteenth century, came one of the finest English 'Romantic' landscape painter & printmaker, and the forerunner of 'Impressionism,' Joseph Mallord William Turner or J.
M.
W.
Turner or simply Joseph Mallord (1775-1851).
Also known as 'the painter of light,' Joseph started exhibiting his work, right from his teenage years.
Undoubtedly, this master player of the 'British Watercolor' painting as well, was deservedly successful throughout his career.
With "The Fighting Temeraire Tugged to her Last Berth to be Broken Up," Joseph Mallord scaled immense heights as a professional artist.
Turner was born in London, England, on April 23, 1775.
His father was a barber & a wig maker.
Mallord faced his mother's death in 1804, when he was very young.
Always artistically competent, at 13 years of age, the artist started selling his drawings at his father's shop window.
He did not receive much schooling, but his father taught him reading, which too could not extend for long.
Turner took the study of arts in 1789, at the much-esteemed Royal Academy of Art, London, England.
After exhibiting at the academy for 40 years, Joseph Mallord delivered his most famous painting "The Fighting Temeraire Tugged to her Last Berth to be Broken Up," an oil on canvass work, executed during 1838-39.
"The Fighting Temeraire Tugged to her Last Berth to be Broken Up" displays one of the last second-rate ships of the line that played a unique role in the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.
HMS Temeraire, popularly known as 'Saucy Temeraire' or "Fighting Temeraire" amongst its crew, was a 98-gun ship.
It retired in 1838.
The painting shows the ship's last moments of existence post-retirement.
In the picture, it is being towed in the river Thames, from Sheerness towards its final berth Rotherhithe, in 1838, to be broken up for scrap.
Mallord's "The Fighting Temeraire Tugged to her Last Berth to be Broken Up's" configuration is quite bizarre such that the most important object, the old warship, is well placed to the left of the painting.
Temeraire's grace is further augmented when compared to the contemporary steam propelled dirty black colored tug.
On Joseph's canvass, Temeraire emerges in a rich magnificence, with almost abnormal colors against the blue sky and rising haze that throws it into divine liberation.
He has used the triangle of blue to depict a second triangle of independent ships, which liberally decrements in size as they become even more aloof.
To Temeraire's opposite side in the painting, and within the same length of the frame as the vessel's main mast, a striking sunset is shown.
The rays of the descending sun extend beyond the clouds, and over the water surface.
The river very beautifully indicates the cloud's blood red color, while the shade of the smoke emerging from the towboat is well exposed.
The setting sun 'Symbolizes' the end of an era in the British Naval history.
Turner's 'Landscape Painting' masterpiece, sized 48.
03" x 35.
83", continues to hang in the National Gallery, London.
He gifted it to the nation in 1851.
It was voted as the Gallery's most supreme painting of all times.