The Victory Returning from Trafalgar, in Three Position

The Victory Returning from Trafalgar in Three Positions, painted in 1806, is Turner's most unusual response to the Trafalgar story — depicting Nelson's flagship HMS Victory at three successive moments as she returns to Portsmouth with Nelson's body preserved in brandy and the evidence of her victorious but costly battle. The three-position format, showing the same ship at different points along her course, was a device from the tradition of navigational illustration rather than fine art, and Turner's adoption of it for a subject of national mourning is characteristic of his willingness to use technically functional devices within a high-art context. The Victory was the most famous ship in Britain at this moment — the vessel associated with the nation's greatest naval hero — and Turner treated her with corresponding reverence. The stormy atmospheric conditions of the painting, with rain squalls and dramatic light effects, create a mood of elegy appropriate to a homecoming that was simultaneously a triumph and a funeral.

Turner renders the Victory in three positions to show different aspects of the ship, combining naval expertise with dramatic atmospheric effects of stormy sky and agitated water.