Painting by J. M. W. Turner
The Wreck of a Transport Ship is an 1810 oil painting by the British artist J.M.W. Turner . [ 1] [ 2] A seascape , it depicts a ship overwhelmed by wind and waves at the height of a fearsome storm . The floundering vessel is doomed to become a shipwreck as lifeboats attempt pick up survivors.
Although not originally based on the loss of the HMS Minotaur of the Royal Navy in November 1810, the real life event boosted the work's topicality. Turner had been producing preparatory sketches before the incident.[ 3] The Minotaur was wrecked off the coast of the Netherlands with heavy loss of life during the Napoleonic Wars . Storms and shipping disasters were a recurring theme of the Romantic Era and Turner frequently portrayed them in works such as Calais Pier , The Shipwreck and the later painting The Slave Ship .
Today the painting is in the collection of the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon , having been acquired in 1920. [ 4] The gallery also holds another Turner painting, the landscape Quillebeuf, Mouth of the Seine . [ 5]
Casaliggi, Carmen. John Ruskin, J.M.W. Turner and the Art of Water . Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2022.
Jamieson, Alan G. Out of the Depths: A History of Shipwrecks . Reaktion Books, 2024.
Shanes, Eric. The Life and Masterworks of J.M.W. Turner . Parkstone International, 2012.
Paintings
Lambeth Palace (1790)
The Rising Squall (1792)
Interior of a Romanesque Church (c. 1795 –1800)
Landscape with Windmill and Rainbow (c. 1795 –1800)
Diana and Callisto (c. 1796 )
Fishermen at Sea (1796)
Interior of a Gothic Church (c. 1797 )
Limekiln at Coalbrookdale (c. 1797 )
Moonlight, a Study at Millbank (1797)
Dunstanburgh Castle (1798)
Aeneas and the Sibyl, Lake Avernus (c. 1798 )
Buttermere Lake (1798)
Caernarvon Castle (c. 1798 )
Morning amongst the Coniston Fells, Cumberland (1798)
Shipping by a Breakwater (1798)
Tivoli and the Roman Campagna (c. 1798 )
View of a Town (c. 1798 )
Dolbadarn Castle (1798–1799)
Self-Portrait (c. 1799 )
View in Wales (c. 1799 –1800)
A Beech Wood with Gypsies round a Campfire (c. 1800 )
A Beech Wood with Gypsies Seated in the Distance (c. 1800 )
Landscape with Lake and Fallen Tree (c. 1800 )
View on Clapham Common (c. 1800 –1805)
The Fifth Plague of Egypt (1800)
Dutch Boats in a Gale (1801)
Fishermen Upon a Lee-Shore in Squally Weather (1802)
The Tenth Plague of Egypt (1802)
Ben Lomond Mountains, Scotland (1802)
Jason (1802)
Ships Bearing Up for Anchorage (1802)
Bonneville, Savoy (1803)
Calais Pier (1803)
The Festival of the Opening of the Vintage at Mâcon (1803)
The Destruction of Sodom (1805)
The Deluge (1805)
The Shipwreck (1805)
Windsor Castle from the Thames (1805)
Fall of the Rhine at Schaffhausen (1806)
The Thames at Weybridge (1806)
Walton Bridges (1806)
Cliveden on Thames (1807)
A Country Blacksmith (1807)
Linlithgow Palace (1807)
Sun Rising through Vapour (1807)
Two Captured Danish Ships Entering Portsmouth Harbour (1807)
The Junction of the Thames and the Medway (1807)
The Forest of Bere (1808)
Pope's Villa at Twickenham (1808)
Margate (1808)
Sheerness as Seen from the Nore (1808)
The Unpaid Bill (1808)
View of Richmond Hill and Bridge (1808)
Fishing Upon the Blythe Sand (1809)
The Garreteer's Petition (1809)
London from Greenwich Park (1809)
Ploughing Up Turnips (1809)
The Trout Stream (1809)
Sun Setting through Vapour (1809)
The Fish Market at Hastings Beach (1810)
High Street, Oxford (1810)
The Wreck of a Transport Ship (1810)
Apollo and Python (1811)
Somer Hill, Tonbridge (1811)
Saltash with the Water Ferry (1811)
Hulks on the Tamar (1811)
St Mawes at the Pilchard Season (1812)
Teignmouth (1812)
Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps (1812)
Frosty Morning (1813)
Dido and Aeneas (1814)
Dido building Carthage (1815)
Crossing the Brook (1815)
The Decline of the Carthaginian Empire (1817)
Raby Castle (1817)
Dort or Dordrecht (1818)
The Field of Waterloo (1818)
Richmond Hill (1819)
Entrance of the Meuse (1819)
Rome, from the Vatican (1820)
George IV at St Giles's, Edinburgh (1822)
The Battle of Trafalgar (1822)
The Bay of Baiae (1823)
The Harbour of Dieppe (1825)
Cologne (1826)
Forum Romanum (1826)
Mortlake Terrace (1826)
Port Ruysdael (1826)
Rembrandt's Daughter (1827)
The Chain Pier, Brighton (1828)
Chichester Canal (1828)
East Cowes Castle (1828)
Palestrina (1828)
Regulus (1828)
View of Orvieto (1828)
Vision of Medea (1828)
The Banks of the Loire (1829)
The Loretto Necklace (1829)
Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus (1829)
Calais Sands at Low Water (1830)
The Evening Star (1830)
Funeral of Sir Thomas Lawrence (1830)
Pilate Washing his Hands (1830)
Caligula's Palace and Bridge (1831)
Lifeboat and Manby Apparatus Going Off to a Stranded Vessel (1831)
Van Tromp's Barge Entering the Texel (1831)
Christ Driving the Traders from the Temple (1832)
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage - Italy (1832)
The Prince of Orange Landing at Torbay (1832)
Staffa, Fingal's Cave (1832)
Quillebeuf, Mouth of the Seine (1833)
Rotterdam Ferry-Boat (1833)
The Fountain of Indolence (1834)
The Golden Bough (1834)
Venice: The Dogana and San Giorgio Maggiore (1834)
St Michael's Mount, Cornwall (1834)
The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons (1835)
Keelmen Heaving in Coals by Moonlight (1835)
Line Fishing, Off Hastings (1835)
Rome, From Mount Aventine (1835)
Venice, from the Porch of Madonna della Salute (c. 1835 )
Juliet and her Nurse (1836)
The Parting of Hero and Leander (1837)
The Fighting Temeraire (1838)
Fishing Boats with Hucksters Bargaining for Fish (1838)
Cicero at His Villa at Tusculum (1839)
Modern Rome – Campo Vaccino (1839)
The Slave Ship (1840)
Neapolitan Fisher Girls Surprised Bathing by Moonlight (1840)
Venice, the Bridge of Sighs (1840)
Venice from the Giudecca (1840)
Schloss Rosenau (1841)
Snow Storm: Steam-Boat off a Harbour's Mouth (1842)
The Dogana, San Giorgio, Citella, from the Steps of the Europa (1842)
The Blue Rigi (1842)
The Red Rigi (1842)
Peace – Burial at Sea (1842)
War. The Exile and the Rock Limpet (1842)
Light and Colour (1843)
The Opening of the Wallhalla (1843)
The Sun of Venice Going to Sea (1843)
Venice, Maria della Salute (1844)
Approach to Venice (1844)
Venice Quay, Ducal Palace (1844)
Ostend (1844)
Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway (1844)
The Arrival of Louis-Philippe at Portsmouth (1845)
Sunrise with Sea Monsters (1845)
Norham Castle, Sunrise (c. 1845 )
Seascape: Folkestone (c. 1845 )
Whalers (1845)
Whalers Entangled in Flaw Ice (1846)
Queen Mab's Cave (1846)
The Hero of a Hundred Fights (1847)
The Wreck Buoy (1849)
Mercury Sent to Admonish Aeneas (1850)
The Departure of the Fleet (1850)
The Beacon Light (unknown)
Prints Museums Related