I didn't know that..

...again.

It's amazing what you can find out quickly these days, but maybe that's not always a good thing. Sometimes it make us think we know more about something than we actually do. I've seen this picture many times in my trips around the national gallery but only looked at it properly on one occasion.

It's called the Fighting Temeraire - an oil painting by the English artist J. M. W. Turner. It was painted in 1838 and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1839.

It depicts one of the last second-rate ships of the line which played a distinguished role in the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, the 98-gun ship HMS Temeraire, being towed by a paddle-wheel steam tug towards its final berth in Rotherhithe in south-east London in 1838 to be broken up for scrap.

The painting hangs in the National Gallery, London, having been bequeathed to the nation by the artist in 1851.

The bit I didn't know was that in 2005 it was voted the nation's favourite painting in a poll organised by BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

I love it's soft appearance and almost regal look and if I didn't know better I'd have said that it looks like it's off out to the great blue yonder on a voyage of discovery.

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.
Aristotle