Nelson's flagship, HMS Victory, towers at the center of the picture with her sails torn and tangled, wrapped in cannon smoke. In the foreground, British seamen in a boat raise a cheer while others pull friend and foe from a dark, heaving sea, and a Union flag is spread out as if to cover the fallen. At the right, the French Redoutable is sinking. King George IV gave J.

M. W. Turner the commission late in 1822, on the advice of Sir Thomas Lawrence, to hang in St James's Palace as a naval pair with Philippe-Jacques de Loutherbourg's view of the Glorious First of June.

The Royal Museums Greenwich call it Turner's only work by royal command and the largest, most publicly controversial painting of his career. It combines incidents from different times in the action, and the mortally wounded Nelson is only implied in the crowd around the mainmast. When it was delivered in 1824, it provoked court criticism for its non-chronological approach, and seamen, including Victory's captain, Sir Thomas Hardy, have criticized it on technical grounds. In late 1829 the king gave it to the Naval Gallery at Greenwich Hospital.

It is in the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London.