Dort, or Dordrecht: The Dort packet-boat from Rotterdam becalmed

In the autumn of 1817 Turner travelled through the Low Countries, and at Dordrecht he filled a sketchbook with the wide Dutch river and its flat silver light. Back in London he turned those notes into this, shown at the Royal Academy in 1818. The becalmed packet boat, its sails hanging slack while smaller craft come alongside to resupply it, is lifted almost directly from Aelbert Cuyp, the 17th-century Dutch painter Turner loved for exactly this kind of golden calm. A critic called it one of the most magnificent pictures ever exhibited, and Turner's patron Walter Fawkes bought it at once. It hung in the drawing room of his Yorkshire house, Farnley Hall, for nearly 150 years.