Navi in rotta per l'ancoraggio (« Il quadro marino di Egremont »)

In 1802 Turner was 27 and had just been made a full member of the Royal Academy, unusually young for the honour. This was one of four pictures he sent to that summer's exhibition, his first as a full Academician, and here he was measuring himself against the old Dutch marine painters, borrowing their weather. Ships heel over in a stiff wind, working toward safe anchorage under a heavy sky. The collector George Wyndham, Earl of Egremont, bought it, which is how it picked up its nickname. It went to his country house at Petworth in Sussex, where Turner became such a welcome guest over the years that a room was eventually set aside for him to paint in.