The Junction of the Thames and the Medway
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Fishing boats and sailing vessels pitch through heavy seas where the Thames meets the Medway. A small rowing boat full of fishermen sits in the center of the composition, caught between swells, while a cutter under gray sail heels to the left and a larger vessel with golden-yellow sails runs before the wind at the right. A barrel bobs loose in the foreground. The sky is split between a dark curtain of storm cloud at the right and a break of pale blue and white light at the left, with gulls circling above. Turner was thirty-two when he painted this, already the most ambitious marine painter in England. The water here is brown and green and violent, painted with the kind of physical knowledge that comes from spending time on fishing boats as a young man.