We are delighted at the horrid grandeur into which he sometimes blackens his skies, rends them with thunder, and throws a lurid gloom on the scene beneath; a spectacle analogous to tragedy in the moral world, the contemplation of which who does not eagerly turn from a prolonged detention on the view of a tranquil, unexciting though, perhaps, agreeable order of things? But he is not, like another eminent painter, in a department partaking of landscape (imaginary landscape indeed) almost constantly embattling the elements of darkness and tempest. He introduces all the homely realities belonging to any of his subjects. There are rustics, fishermen, sailors, crowded market-places, amusements, labours, utensils, and accommodations of ordinary life.
The critic noted that these pictures lack the 'wanton perversities of colouring latterly charged on Turner's pencil' p. 666.