J.M.W. Turner, The Wreck of the Minotaur

                           "The Wreck of the Minotaur"  (1810)                             

                             (Also known as The Wreck of a Transport Ship)                                        

 Oil on canvas, Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon

J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851) - "Painter of Light", his work is regarded as a

                                                'Romantic Preface' to Impressionism.

Minotaur  was a 74-gun ship of the line of the Royal Navy, launched on 6 November 1793.  She was named after the mythological bull-headed monster of Crete.This ship participated in the Battle of the Nile (1798) and in the Battle of Trafalgar (1805) and was wrecked on 22nd December 1810.

The sinking of the ship was  depicted by the famed landscape painter J.M.W. Turner, though the subject was not originally the Minotaur, but a generic 'transport ship'. Turner had been producing sketches in preparation for the painting as early as 1805, but by the time he had completed the painting in 1810, the recent wreck of the Minotaur was a subject of much discussion, and the painting was named to capitalise on this public interest.