A ghostly warship, pale as bone, glides up the river behind a squat black tug belching smoke and fire. Beyond them the sun goes down in a blaze of orange and red. J.M.W. Turner's The Fighting Temeraire (1839) shows a veteran of Trafalgar on its way to the breaker's yard, and it turns a routine piece of salvage into one of the great elegies in British painting. Quick facts Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) Date: 1839 Medium: Oil on canvas Collection: The National Gallery, London (Turner Bequest, 1856) Notable fact: Voted the greatest painting in a British collection in a 2005 BBC Radio 4 poll, and chosen for the back of the Bank of England £20 note in 2020 J.M.W. Turner, The Fighting Temeraire, 1839. Oil on canvas. The National Gallery, London. Image via the Sapiens Verbum print shop. A Ship That Fought at Trafalgar HMS Temeraire was a 98-gun ship of the line. At Trafalgar in 1805 she sailed into action directly behind Nelson's flagship, Victory...

A crowd of Cossacks howls with laughter around a scribe. Someone is drafting a reply so insulting it has become entertainment. Ilya Repin's Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks (1880-1891) turns a folk legend - a rude letter to Ottoman Sultan Mehmed IV - into a democratic roar of faces, pipes, and bare chests: defiance as comedy with teeth. Quick facts Artist: Ilya Repin (1844-1930) Date: 1880-1891 Medium: Oil on canvas Collection: State Russian Museum, Saint Petersburg Notable fact: Also known as Cossacks writing a letter to the Turkish sultan; painted across more than a decade; Ukrainian legend of Zaporozhian bravado Ilya Repin, Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks , 1880-1891. State Russian Museum, Saint Petersburg. A Letter Written in Laughter The story says the sultan demanded submission; the Zaporozhian Host answered with mockery. Repin does not freeze a single hero. He builds a chorus: bald heads, grinning teeth, a clerk bent to the page while chaos orbits him. R...

Three brothers snap their arms toward three swords held by their father; behind them, women collapse in grief. Stone arches divide the space like a stage. In Jacques-Louis David's Oath of the Horatii (1784), loyalty is geometric - and private love is pushed to the shadows. Quick facts Artist: Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825) Date: 1784 Medium: Oil on canvas (330 x 425 cm) Collection: Musee du Louvre, Paris Notable fact: Commissioned under Louis XVI; became an emblem of civic duty on the eve of revolutionary upheaval Jacques-Louis David, Oath of the Horatii , 1784. Oil on canvas (330 x 425 cm). Musee du Louvre, Paris. Rome Before the Duel The Horatii, champions of Rome, must fight the Curiatii of Alba Longa to settle a quarrel between cities. Family ties cross both sides; the father still demands the oath. David freezes the instant of public resolve, not the later bloodshed he once considered painting (a surviving brother killing his own sister). He judged that afte...