An atmospheric early work, painted when Taylor was a 24-year-old student at the Royal Academy schools. It was probably painted out-of-doors, and captures a fine effect, as a fishing boat lies at anchor just outside the surf, waiting to land a catch, at the setting of the sun. Taylor seems always to have painted in a Dutch manner, and his interior scenes on small panels were painted ‘with the care and beauty of a Flemish master’ (Manchester Courier, 1905). Years later when he was elected Royal Academician in 1931, the Daily Herald described Taylor as 'the most subtle of all painters — the Chopin of the brush’.