Pescadores en el mar

Turner had just turned 21 in 1796 when he showed this at the Royal Academy, the first oil painting he exhibited there after making his name in watercolour. It is a night at sea. A small fishing boat rides a heavy swell by the light of a single lantern and a cold full moon breaking through cloud, the two lights answering each other across the dark water. The jagged shapes on the left are the Needles, the treacherous rocks off the Isle of Wight. Critics singled out the young painter at once, praising him both as an oil painter and as a painter of the sea. He had worked the whole scene up from sketches he made on the island the summer before.