James Baker Pyne was a landscape and seascape painter and watercolourist from Bristol, where he worked as a self-taught local artist until the age of thirty-five. He first exhibited at the Bristol Gallery of Arts in 1824 where his name was added to an already prepared list of artists who were to receive free tickets to the Bristol Institution's first Old Master exhibition. The Boatyard dates from his early period, when Pyne chiefly painted views and scenery in and around his native Bristol. It was in 1832, the same year that this work was painted, that he produced his famous oil paintings of the Bristol Riots which he exhibited in 1833 in London. These early works are greatly influenced by the earlier Bristol painter Francis Danby. Pyne's response to Danby's poetic landscapes is evident and he, like Danby, had success in describing man's sensations before nature. Danby would have admired Pyne's impressive dark tones which he merged with a sweetness of colour. After 1835 he travelled to the Continent where his style and subject matter changed dramatically. Only very occasionally was his later work to contain the mood and fantasy of his early paintings which are often described as `Turneresque'. James Pyne's style shows his admiration, and to some extent imitation of Turner, whose use of pale yellow tones and light effects he adopted. Pyne mainly exhibited at the Royal Academy, the British Institution, the New Watercolour Society and the Royal Society of British Artists.