The Fighting Temeraire

The pale ghost of HMS Temeraire, a hero of Trafalgar, is towed up the Thames by a squat black steam tug to be broken up for scrap, while a blazing sunset burns down the sky behind her. Turner painted the scene in 1838-39 and treasured it, refusing to sell and bequeathing it to the nation at his death in 1851. An elegy for the age of sail painted at the dawn of steam, it was voted Britain's favourite painting in 2005 and appears on the £20 note; it hangs in the National Gallery, London.