Fishermen at Sea was depicted by Joseph Mallord William Turner who was English romantic landscape painter, famous watercolor painter and printmaking artist. At that time, 21-year-old Turner has minor celebrity for his classical style watercolor topography painting, and popular among collectors. But he considered that to establish his reputation, he must produce more mature oil paintings.

In this painting, the fishing boat’s location was Isle of Wight that outside the southern coastline of the British. Turner has been visited the island in 1795 and painted a lot of sketches and watercolors about the coast that included in Sketch of Isle of Wight. However, there were no another sketches exactly correspond to it. Until recently, people think that the rock on the left side was Dells reefs on the western island. Few people know that he had created the painting with high creative skill and quality, but we can see that this was not his first attempt at painting. “Boats floating and flickering on the sea naturally, while the water waving, which created realistic effects.” This honorable reputation was praised by the review guide from Royal Academy of Arts for its naturalism characteristic.

In fact, from the processing technique of light and shadow, and the moonlight and flame, we could see that Turner was imitated the style of former generation of artists, such as Claude-Joseph Vernet and Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg. If you carefully enough, you will also delighted to find that in this early oil painting has been appeared signs of “Turner” intense vortex structure. The signs in his later paintings were important elements, such as Storm Seam Boat off a Harbour.