Saltash avec le bac à eau, Cornouailles

Turner made the tour behind this picture in the summer of 1811, going through Devon and Cornwall to gather material for a series of engraved views of southern England. Britain had been at war with France for most of 20 years, and the water here was the Navy's western hinge. Across the Tamar from Saltash lay Plymouth and its dockyard, where fleets were fitted out and men were pressed into service. Turner kept all of that to the edges. He painted the market traffic on the mud, the packhorses and small boats and the ferry that had been crossing there for centuries, with a uniformed sentry standing among them. John Ruskin later called it what the mind sees when it looks for poetry in humble actual life. Turner never sent the canvas to the Royal Academy. He showed it in his own London gallery, which he kept so that he could exhibit on his own terms.