Exhibited with the following lines from the Fallacies of

Hope:

The midnight torch gleamed o'er the steamer's side

And Merit's corse was yielded to the tide.

The painting is a memorial to Turner's friend and erstwhile rival Sir David Wilkie who died on board the Oriental on the way back from the Middle East on 1 June 1841; he was buried at sea off Gibraltar at 8.30 the same evening. Turner's picture was done in friendly rivalry with George Jones, who did a drawing of the burial as seen on deck (see No.B40). Jones reported that Clarkson Stanfield objected to the darkness of the sails; 'I only wish I had any colour to make them blacker,' replied Turner, who may also have been alluding to Wilkie's marked use of black in his later pictures.

At the Academy the painting was paired with ‘War The Exile and the Rock Limpet'; , a picture of Napoleon on St. Helena (Tate Gallery 529) and complementary in colour, being dominated by reds. Such pairings of works of contrasted colour were also to be a feature of Turner's Academy contributions in 1843 and 1845 (see

Nos. 522-3 and 526).

As usual the critics, after praising, in most instances, Turner's Venetian exhibits, vented their fury on his more imaginative works. 'He is as successful as ever in noir caricaturing himself, in two round blotches of rouge et , wrote the Spectator for 7 May 1842. The Athenaeum, 14 May, felt embarrassed that foreign visitors should see such works and concluded, 'We will not endure the music of Berlioz, nor abide Hoffmann's fantasy-pieces' - interesting comparisons - 'Yet the former is orderly, and the latter are commonplace, compared with these outbreaks'. Both Ainsworth's Magazine, June 1842, and the Art Union, 1 June, came out with the old suggestion that they would look as well turned upside down.

Surprisingly even Ruskin, though finally spurred on to write the first volume of Modern Painters by the hostility of the critics in 1842, had little to say about 'Peace' (though a considerable amount about 'War') and dismissed it as 'Spoiled by Turner's endeavour to give funereal and unnatural blackness to the sails'