Artwork · 19th century · Joseph Mallord William Turner

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Fishing Boats with Hucksters Bargaining for Fish

Joseph Mallord William Turner1837–38Oil on canvas174.5 × 224.9 cm

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At a glance

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A crowded fishing boat rides a rough sea while a small boat of fish dealers comes alongside to bargain.
The English painter Joseph Mallord William Turner made it around 1837–38.
A gathering storm, sunlit foam, and a far-off steamship put the weather of the sea and the changes of the age into one canvas.

Reading the picture

5 places to look closer

Tap a number on the painting to jump to its note, or a close-up to see that spot in the whole picture.

Zoom into the white flag at the top of the mast, flying against a patch of blue sky. Faint red letters are written across it. That is Turner's name. He chose a flag snapping in the wind as the place to sign.
Come down to the big fishing boat on the left. Its deck is packed with people, some sitting, some standing. The bow lifts out of a burst of white spray. The swollen sail heels the whole boat over to one side.
Look at the small boat on the dark water to the right. A man stands up and stretches an arm toward the fishing boat. Hucksters were dealers who bought fish at sea and sold it again in port. Behind them, right on the horizon, a tiny steamship trails black smoke.
Find the brown buoy floating at the lower right. It is shaped like a bell, with a round ring on top. In all that wide, dark water, this one solid shape holds your eye.
Zoom into the waves at the lower left. White and yellowish paint sits up in thick, rough ridges. Laying paint on this heavily is called impasto. The sunlit foam stands off the canvas so much you almost want to touch it.

When it was painted

When Turner painted this, he was in his early sixties. The son of a London barber, he had entered the Royal Academy Schools at fourteen and become a full Academician at twenty-six. By now he was a senior figure in the London art world, yet his seas were dissolving more and more into light, storm, and mist.

He had studied seventeenth-century Dutch sea painting closely. Like the work of Willem van de Velde, which English collectors loved, this picture sets a low horizon and puts a fishing boat up front. Then Turner signed it on that flag, claiming the picture as his own.

He also loved a contest. The Royal Academy held varnishing days, when artists could touch up their pictures already hanging on the walls, and Turner used them to repaint almost from scratch. In 1832 his gray seascape hung next to a brilliant canvas by John Constable. Turner walked up and added a single red buoy to his own picture. The painter C. R. Leslie recorded Constable's verdict: Turner had come in and fired a gun.

Steamships were spreading along English coasts in these years. In 1839 Turner showed The Fighting Temeraire, an old warship towed by a steam tug. The little steamer on this horizon belongs to the same changing world.

The painting was bought straight from the artist in 1851 by a collector named John Naylor. Turner died in London that December. The picture later crossed to America and entered the Art Institute of Chicago in 1922 with the collection of Mr. and Mrs. W. W. Kimball.

Now look once more at the buoy at the lower right. One small dark shape on the water quietly anchors the whole stormy sea.

The painter

Joseph Mallord William Turner

1775–1851

All paintings by Joseph Mallord William Turner →

More by the same painter

Whalersca. 1845

Questions to think about

Look for itHow many boats with sails can you find in the picture?
Why?Why might Turner have signed his name on a flag at the top of the mast instead of in a corner?
What about you?Here the bargaining happens in the middle of the sea. How many hands do you think the fish on your own dinner table passed through before it reached you?

Same period