Turner: Art, Industry & Nostalgia will include over 20 works by Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851), one of Britain’s greatest and most prolific painters. The Fighting Temeraire, one of the artist’s best-known works, is a tribute to the ship HMS Temeraire, which played a distinguished role in The Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. The painting shows the final journey of the ship as it is towed along the river Thames by a modern paddle-wheel steam tug in 1838, towards its final berth in Rotherhithe to be broken up for scrap.  

It is significant for the North East and its industrial heritage that the two steam tugboats that pulled the Temeraire in reality – the Samson and the London – were manufactured on Tyneside.