This little known picture has strong claims to be one of Callcott’s most splendid and dramatic works. It was exhibited in 1822, one of a series of large seascapes that the artist showed at the Royal Academy, at the rate of one a year, from 1815. These pictures in terms of scale and significance can be compared with Constable’s series of “six footers” and they establish a benchmark for artist’s such as Turner and Bonington and the subsequent tradition of English maritime painting.

Callcott is most frequently compared with his contemporary and close friend J.M.W. Turner. The two artists charged the same for similarly sized work and there was clearly a keen sense of rivalry between them. Turner should not be seen as the dominant influence and Callcott’s 1816 Academy exhibit The Pool of London (Lansdowne Collection, Bowood) directly inspired the latter’s picture Dort or Dortrecht: The Dort Packet-Boat from Rotterdam (Yale Centre for British Art).

Smugglers Alarmed by an Unexpected change of Hazy Weather is an unusually dramatic subject for Callcott and is in contrast to the pattern of serene marines, in the manner of the great Dutch 17^th century painters, that he had previously been exhibiting. The choice of a contemporary subject may have been driven by the artist’s patron, Sir Thomas Heathcote, who was MP for Hampshire, a county notorious for smuggling. It provided a golden opportunity for Callcott to showcase a different aspect of his skills and, in particular, his supreme painting of the sky. The challenge was taken up and in the mid 1820’s Turner also began painting scenes with smugglers.

Heathcote had previously commissioned another large picture from Callcott Dead Calm – Boats of Cowes Castle. That and the present picture stayed in the family until the death of Sir William Heathcote in 1881. The present picture was donated to the Slater Memorial Museum, Norwich, Connecticut, in 1964.

In a c.1810 English reproduction gilded frame, of a cavetto section, with lambs tongue sight moudling, acorn and oak leaf and laurel leaf ornament.