Swanage

William Daniell's hand-colored aquatint illustrates the difficulty of maintaining control of the sea once it had been, in a sense, claimed by Britain's perception of itself as a great maritime power. This difficulty is mirrored in the struggle of the men attempting to haul a rowboat ashore and in the labored leaning of the distant vessels against the storm. Two men attempt to haul a boat (one other man inside) to shore in a storm. A variety of ships out to sea appear lashed by the wind and waves. To the right of the image there is a house on the shore, directly on the water's edge. The small but distinct figure of a person holding an umbrella appears to observe the storm from the balcony. A beach and a forested area behind the house frame the right side of the image; a shored row boat juts out of the left corner into the foreground, and a cliff extends along the middleground of the left side.

This hand-colored aquatint illustrates the tension between Britain's perception of itself as a great maritime power and the natural, man-defying power of the sea. The use of light on the foaming edges of the waves calls the viewer’s attention to this tension as it is focalized in the struggle of the men with the boat. Deep shadows fall over sections of the distant sea, which work together with the grey sky and the rough waves to create the ominous image of a storm capable of overcoming, at any moment, the laboring, leaning ships.

Daniell’s success as an artist was based on his creation of aquatints, which he could sell to the common public (rather than non-print artwork, which only the upper class could afford). His successful sales demonstrate the existence of a common demand for marine paintings and seascapes, proving the involvement of this aesthetic in Romantic British society and, consequently, in Romantic visual culture.