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This painting is the largest that Turner ever painted and is his only Royal commission. The work was ordered by
King George IV to hang in St James's Palace alongside de Loutherbourg's The Glorious First of June, and also to
complement two further battle scenes of Vittoria and Waterloo by Turner's friend George Jones. The commission itself was
probably obtained through Sir Thomas Lawrence the President of the Royal Academy. In order to garner factual material on
the ships that had participated in the battle, Turner borrowed sketches from the marine painter J.C. Schetky, although he
already possessed studies of Nelson's flagship, the Victory, which he had obtained after Nelson's body was returned home
in I805. When the work went on view in St James's Palace Turner was severely criticized for having made a number of
errors in the rigging of the various ships and other nautical details, and he spent some eleven days altering the work to
meet those criticisms, including lowering the victory in the water, for Schetky had sketched the ship when she was
unladen in Portsmouth harbour. Yet even after meeting these criticisms the painting continued to mystify Turner's very
literal-minded naval contemporaries (including King William IV), principally because the artist had followed the demands
of the theory of poetic painting to evade the limitations of time. As a result, we see events that took place hours
apart, such as the signaling of the last word from Nelson's famous telegraphic message `England expects every man to do
his duty' which had gone up around midday, alongside the collapse of the top-mizzenmast of the victory which occurred at
1 pm, the Achille on fire off the Victory which took place late in the afternoon, and the Redoubtable sinking in front of
the Victory which did not happen until the following night (and even then it sank elsewhere). Naturally, these
manipulations of the constraints of time were not welcomed by an audience who wanted `the facts, the facts and nothing
but the facts'; well might Turner have responded by citing Michelangelo's riposte to a critic of one of his effigies that
it looked nothing like the person it was meant to portray: 'Well, in a thousand years time nobody will know the
difference'.
The foreground filled with carnage might not have helped public acceptance of the work either, for such anti-war
sentiments would not have been popular with most naval viewers. The low viewpoint makes the men-of-war tower up over us,
and their vast billowing sails serve to express the immense forces unleashed by war.
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 The First Rate Taking in Stores 1818 (painted by Turner in a single
morning) Back to Top
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 The Battle of Trafalgar, as seen from the Mizen Starboard Shrouds of The Victory, 1806, 171 x
239 cm, Tate Gallery, London
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| , significant naval engagement of the Napoleonic Wars, fought on
October 21, 1805. The battle's name comes from the nearest land Cape Trafalgar on the southern Spanish coast between Cadiz
and Gibraltar. The British fleet totaling 27 ships are forming a blockade of Cadiz and are under the command of Nelson in the
flag ship the Victory with the Temeraire by her side. The French and Spanish fleet outnumber the British by six ships and are
commanded by Vice Admiral Charles de Villeneuve, who formed his ships into a single battle line. Nelson surprised his
adversary by ordering his ships into two groups, each of which slice through the French fleet at right angles, demolishing
the battle line; giving the British fleet an advantage. The battle began shortly before noon; when it ended, in the late
afternoon, some 20 French and Spanish ships had been destroyed or captured, while not a single British vessel was lost.
Villeneuve himself was taken prisoner, French casualties and prisoners totaled some 14,000. The British suffered around 1,500
casualties. The Temeraire came to the rescue of the Victory under fire from the French Redoubtable and saved her flag ship,
unfortunately Nelson had already been fatally wounded. |
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