This painting most perfectly depicts Turner’s preoccupation with the effects of moonlight and firelight. Turner is known to have watched the fire from a boat on the Thames and he made sketches from both sides of the river. He is thought to have wandered through the crowds on the Thames Banks, whose anguish is represented in the paintings. Here Turner uses thickly applied masses of yellow and red which is a direct consequence of his experiments with colour and monochrome in the 1920’s