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Joseph Mallord William Turner (English, 1775–1851)
The Battle of Trafalgar, 21 October 1805, 1823–4
Oil on canvas; 102 x 144 in. (259 x 365.8 cm)
National Maritime Museum, London, Greenwich Hospital Collection
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Turner's largest painting, this work was commissioned by King George IV about eighteen years after the event it depicts—the British defeat under Admiral Nelson of a combined French and Spanish fleet at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. The conflation of different moments in the battle—the peak of the fighting alongside the sinking of the French ship Redoutable, which happened the next day—was controversial. A captain who witnessed Nelson's death aboard the HMS Victory, shown at the center of the composition, found Turner's painting to be "more like a street scene than a battle."
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