'The Wreck Buoy', Joseph Mallord William Turner

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The art critic John Ruskin, a great admirer of Turner, described this as ‘the last oil he painted before his noble hand forgot its cunning’. It is a re-working of an earlier picture and a summation of Turner’s concern with the sea. The artist’s pessimistic view of human endeavour and the fallacy of hope is symbolised by the rainbow and the wreck buoy beneath it.