Free Republic

As museums around the world celebrate the 250th birthday of JMW Turner, it's time to reappraise his beloved and celebrated painting, The Fighting Temeraire. JMW Turner's The Fighting Temeraire became a national celebrity when it was first unveiled in 1839, and its fame has endured to the present day. It was once voted Britain's favourite painting and currently features on £20 banknotes. But the widely accepted interpretation of this iconic painting's message might, in fact, contradict Turner's true intentions. The "Temeraire" of the title refers to a 98-gun warship of the British Navy, which is depicted in the painting's background....

Today marks British Victorian-era novelist and satirist William Makepeace Thackeray’s 200th birthday. Last night, reader Doug snapped a pic of a poster placed on the corner of NE. 45th St. at Thackeray Pl. NE., commemorating the occasion. Among the dozen or so novels he wrote, Thackeray’s most famous works are Vanity Fair, The Luck of Barry Lyndon, The History of Henry Esmond, and its sequel, The Virginians. Though historians claim Thackeray was second only to Dickens in terms of popularity, his biography doesn’t appear in my dusty, old Norton Anthology, so I relied on Wikipedia to provide you with some...