In 1833 Turner exhibited the first of his eleven remarkable Venetian pictures, one of the finest being, "The Sun of Venice going to Sea." "The characteristics which they have in common," says Hamerton, "are splendor of color and carelessness of form; the color being, in most instances, really founded upon the true Venetian color, but worked up to the utmost brilliance which the palette would allow, the forms simply sketched, exactly on the principles of the artist's own free sketching in water colors.... It is believed, and with probability, that he blocked out the picture almost entirely in pure white, with only some very pale tinting, just to mark the position of the objects, and that this white preparation was thick and loaded from the beginning. On this he afterwards painted thinly in oil or water-color, or both, so that the brilliance of the white shone through the color, and gave it that very luminous quality which it possesses. This is simply a return to the early Flemish practice of painting thinly on a light ground, with the difference, however, that Turner made a fresh ground of his own between the canvas and his bright colors, and that the modelling of the impasto with the brush was done in this thick white. The result was to unite the brilliance of water-color to the varied and rich surface of massive oil-painting." These pictures called forth much adverse criticism, but they soon had a Herculean defender in the "Oxford Undergraduate" of 1836, the Ruskin of "Modern Painters." In 1839, Turner exhibited "The fighting _Téméraire_ tugged to her last berth to be broken up, 1838." Thornbury tells how the subject was suggested to Turner. "In 1838, Turner was with Stanfield and a party of brother artists on one of those holiday excursions, in which he so delighted, probably to end with whitebait and champagne at Greenwich. It was at these times that Turner talked and joked his best, snatching, now and then, a moment to print on his quick brain some tone of sky, some gleam of water, some sprinkling light of oar, some glancing sunshine cross-barring a sail. Suddenly there moved down upon the artist's boat the grand old vessel that had been taken prisoner at the Nile and that led the van at Trafalgar. She loomed pale and ghostly, and was being towed to her last moorings at Deptford by a little fiery, puny steam-tug. "'There's a fine subject, Turner,' said Stanfield," and the suggestion was gladly acted upon.