Danby was a member of the
Bristol School of the
Regency era but moved to London the same year he produced this painting.
Romantic in style, it shows a red setting sun on the horizon, in the foreground is a raft with the survivors of a
shipwreck. It is likely to have been inspired by French artist
Théodore Géricault's 1819 painting
The Raft of the Medusa. The work was first displayed at the Bristol Institution and then at the
Royal Academy's
Summer Exhibition of 1824 at
Somerset House in London where it attracted praise. It was purchased by the
President of the Royal Academy Thomas Lawrence for a hundred pounds, twice the price that Danby was asking for it. The painting is today in the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery, having been acquired in 1982. ==References==