Hamerton says: "The picture is, both in sentiment and execution, one of the finest of the later works. The sky and water are both magnificent, and the shipping, though not treated with severe positive truth, is made to harmonize well with the rest, and not stuck _upon_ the canvas, as often happens in the works of bad marine painters. The sun sets in red, and the red, by the artist's craft, is made at the same time both decided in hue and luminous, always a great technical difficulty. Golden sunsets are easy in comparison, as every painter knows. This picture has more than once been associated by critics with the magnificent 'Ulysses deriding Polyphemus,' which was painted ten years earlier. Both are splendid in sky and water, and both are florid in color. Mr. Ruskin's opinion is that the period of Turner's central power, 'entirely developed and entirely unabated, begins with the Ulysses, and closes with the _Téméraire_.' "This decade had been a time of immense industry for Turner. In that space he had made more than four hundred drawings for the engraver, had exhibited more than fifty pictures in the Royal Academy, and had executed, besides, some thousands of sketches, and probably many private commissions which cannot easily be ascertained." One reason of his aversion to society was his desire to save time for this great amount of work. The _Téméraire_, though sought by several persons, the artist refused to sell at any price, and bequeathed it to the nation. From 1840 to 1845, Turner painted a few pictures of great power. The "Slave Ship, slavers throwing overboard the dead and dying, typhoon coming on," was exhibited in 1840. It became the property of Mr. Ruskin, who sold it, and it is now in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. It represents a sunset on the Atlantic after a storm. It is gorgeous in color, and is regarded by many as the grandest sea which Turner ever painted. The "Snowstorm," in 1842, was harshly criticised, and called "soapsuds and whitewash." The picture represents a steamer off a harbor in a storm, making signals. Ruskin says: "Turner was passing the evening at my father's house, on the day this criticism came out; and after dinner, sitting in his armchair, I heard him muttering low to himself at intervals, 'Soapsuds and whitewash!' again, and again, and again. At last I went to him, asking 'why he minded what they said.' Then he burst out: 'Soapsuds and whitewash! what would they have? I wonder what they think the sea's like? I wish they'd been in it!'" Turner had been in the storm, and knew that he had painted truthfully. One night, when the Ariel left Harwich, he "got the sailors to lash him to the mast, to observe the storm," and remained there four hours, not expecting to survive it.