Thames Estuary
From 1807 Turner exhibited in his own gallery a series of pictures of shipping in the Thames estuary. Around this time Turner began some of his oil sketches out-of-doors. However, despite the fact that sketches such as Shipping at the Mouth of the Thames display great spontaneity in the way that the waves and the glimpses of light through clouds are captured, it is hard to imagine Turner handling a canvas as large as this in the open air, on board a boat.

The confluence of the River Thames and the Medway offshore from Sheerness was one of the busiest anchorages in Britain and therefore rich in subject matter for Turner. His interest in coastal and marine painting began during his early years as an artist, and some of these subjects are treated in the tradition of seventeenth-century Dutch masters whom Turner had admired as a young man. Fishing upon Blythe-Sand, Tide Setting In represents a more finished version of the type of Thames oil sketch Turner was painting around 1807. This picture was exhibited not only at Turner's own gallery, but also at the Royal Academy in 1815. Blythe Sands are in the Thames estuary above Sheerness.