Now he began to invent his own watercolour techniques, a sign of personal confidence. Public confidence was proudly demonstrated by his first Academy picture, Fishermen at Sea. It was painted to show others what he could do, and there is already a hint of performance in the canvas. Although he was not an eloquent man, Turner was indeed a performer by nature. Secretive in many ways, he would still paint in public, and it's possible that the mood of his art was affected by the theatre of the day, its relish for bombast and high emotion.The purely pictorial influence on the early sea paintings is of course Dutch. Early Turner often appeared as an individual follower of his admired Ruysdael, though a follower with more sense of scale and majesty. Calais Pier of 1803 is the masterpiece of this tendency to follow the Dutch masters.

Other paintings from the turn of the century show that he was not beholden to a single model but had a flexible style that could engineer grand variations on a number of revered Renaissance and Baroque painters. This was so especially after his first visit to the Louvre in 1802. Now he could suddenly paint the powerful Tenth Plague of Egypt, a tragic subject that shows his assimilation of the differing styles of Poussin and Salvator Rosa. When he was most confident, Turner could deal with almost any former European artist who had adumbrated his own concerns.The exception was Claude.

It sometimes happens that artists, even great artists, are not only influenced but haunted by a predecessor. However much they try they cannot escape the shade that stalks their imagination. Turner could not exorcise Claude, who prevented him from becoming a totally original painter. We first hear of Turner considering Claude in a disturbing story of the time. The London merchant John Julius Angerstein had a collection of Old Masters. Turner was allowed to see them:Angerstein came into the room while the young painter was looking at 'The Sea Port' by Claude, and spoke to him Turner was awkward, agitated, and burst into tears. Mr Angerstein enquired the cause and pressed for an answer, when Turner said passionately, 'because I shall never be able to paint anything like that picture'.Observe that this is a tale of distress.