A portrait of the White Star liner, 'Teutonic', leaving Liverpool in July 1889. The ship was built in 1889 for the Atlantic trade by Harland & Wolff Ltd in Belfast, for Ismay Imrie & Co. of Liverpool, the White Star owners. She was designed by A. H. Carlisle, who was later also responsible for White Star's 'Olympic' and 'Titanic'. When launched, 'Teutonic' caused a sensation because she and her sister ship, 'Majestic' (1890), were the first luxury liners to be specially designed for potential use as armed merchant cruisers, with gun mountings, magazines and additional bunkerage. Her hull was extraordinarily strong and within 24 hours she could be fitted with eight 4.7-inch quick-firing guns and converted to transporting 2000 infantry. She is shown here as a brand new ship in port-bow view, sailing for the Spithead review held in honour of Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany on 4 August 1889. The two 4.7-inch guns specially mounted for the occasion are visible in the picture.

'Teutonic' is also shown flying the blue ensign from the stern (the colour of the Royal Naval reserve and auxiliary forces) and the White Star flag (a white star on a red ground). The American stars-and-stripes also flies from the foremast, to indicate her Atlantic role. She has two funnels painted yellow and set far enough apart to enable the saloon to be placed in between. She is flanked by two attendant tugs and the city of Liverpool is visible behind her in the left distance. Small working craft line the picture on the right including a tug towing a flat-bottomed barge. The boat in the right foreground holds several sitting figures, looking towards the passing ship. One man dressed as a sailor with straw or sennit (braided rope) hat, holds the tiller. Another small boat towed by the barge has one figure standing and another seated and facing away from the 'Teutonic' towards the viewer, this could be a fisherman in a white jumper. Sails of sailing ships, representing another age, are shown amongst the funnels and seagulls are featured on the water.

Wyllie and his wife were among the White Star guests who sailed on 'Teutonic' from Liverpool for the Spithead review, and he made sketches on board. The Prince of Wales admired these and showed them to the Kaiser, who later instituted a similar scheme of his own for auxiliary cruisers.

The son of an English genre painter, William Morrison Wyllie, the artist was a painter and engraver. He spent most of his childhood summers in France, where his parents owned houses on the coast, first at Boulogne and later at Wimereux. He entered the Royal Academy schools in 1866 and won the Turner Gold Medal for Landscape in 1870. His interest in the sea developed into a continuing career as a marine painter. He was elected ARA in 1889, following an exhibition of 69 watercolours at the Fine Art Society. In the 1890s his development as a watercolourist reached its peak. He worked on paintings of shipping throughout World War I. Thereafter he is best remembered for his series of small etchings and drypoints of London views in the 1920s, and for his large but only partly successful panorama of the Battle of Trafalgar, painted shortly before his death for what is now the Royal Naval Museum, Portsmouth.

This painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1890 and is signed 'W.L.Wyllie', lower left. The following year Wyllie exhibited another entitled 'Spithead, 4 August 1889, H.I.M. the Emperor of Germany and H.R.H. the Prince of Wales inspecting the 'Teutonic' mercantile armed cruiser, White Star Line'.