One ship at sea in rough waves with two boats. Figures are on the beach. The selection of this painting for the Bequest by Lord Iveagh may have been because the subject accorded with his personal love of sailing. However, the inclusion of the The Iveagh Sea Piece also allowed visitors to the Bequest to compare Turner’s handling of a maritime subject with those by the Dutch 17th-Century painters also represented in the collection.
Joseph Mallord William Turner, (baptised 14 May 1775 – 19 December 1851) was an English Romanticist landscape painter. Although renowned for his oil paintings, Turner is also one of the greatest masters of British watercolour landscape painting. He is commonly known as "the painter of light".