Barche olandesi nella tempesta

In 1801 Turner was 26 and hungry to be taken seriously. The Duke of Bridgewater, rich from coal and canals, owned a stormy sea-piece by the old Dutch master Willem van de Velde and asked the young Englishman to paint a companion to hang beside it. Turner took that literally, echoing the Dutchman's composition but flipping it, so his boats heel the other way and his weather blows in from the opposite side. When it went up at the Royal Academy the crowds packed around it. He was paid £250, more than he had ever earned for a painting, and from then on he was a marine painter to reckon with. Two Dutch fishing boats lurch past each other in the swell, close enough that you feel the collision they are trying to avoid.