This painting is called The Fighting Temeraire. Temeraire is the name of the big, old sailing ship that you can see on the left of the picture. People chose this picture to be the greatest painting in Britain.
J.M.W. Turner painted it in 1839.It shows the old sailing ship, the Temeraire, on the River Thames near London. There's a small tugboat pulling the old ship. It's in fact taking the Temeraire on its last journey. The old ship is going to the breaker's yard. In the background we can see the sun setting.
The picture, however, is more than just a painting of two boats in the evening. The artist wanted to show the end of an era (时代). The time of the beautiful, old sailing ships is coming to an end. That's why we see this happening at sunset. In the little, brown tugboat we can see the new industrial era starting. The tugboat is small and dark and it's making a lot of smoke, but it's very strong, because it's pulling the much bigger ship.
The painting shows a real event. Turner watched the Temeraire taking its last journey up the Thames, but he changed some of the details. He painted the old ship white and gold so that it looks like a ghost. In fact, the real ship was black and yellow. We also see the sun setting behind the ship, but in fact, the ship travelled towards the sunset. However, Turner wanted to show the sun setting on the time of the beautiful old sailing ships.
Turner painted The Fighting Temeraire when he was quite old, so perhaps he wanted to show the sun setting on his own life, too. He loved the painting and he never sold it. You can see it today in the National Gallery in London.
