This canvas is not precisely datable but is fairly close to the 'Study of Sea and Sky' of 1827 (No.319) and serves to give some idea of how the two rolls of canvas used at Cowes must have looked before they were cut up. Here, however, Turner painted three sea-scapes, one of them to be seen with the canvas turned upside down so that two of the compositions share a single sky, and the smaller size of the canvas would have made it much more manageable.