According to the Tate Gallery's website, "It is famously said that Turner conceived this image while lashed to the mast of a ship during an actual storm at sea. This seems to be nothing more than fiction, but the story has endured as a way of demonstrating Turner's full–blooded engagement with the world around him."
The image in question is Snow Storm – Steam–Boat off a Harbour's Mouth (first exhibited in 1842).
© Haydn Thompson 2017