A later reinterpretation of the theme of 'Blythe-Sand' (No.155) with the elegiac mood also found in 'A Ship Aground' (No.329) and 'The Evening Star' (National Gallery, London, 1991). Turner had visited Calais a number of times, the latest being in the late summer of 1829 on the way to Paris, and the 'Meuse and Moselle' sketchbook includes a drawing related to the figures and inscribed 'Fisher women looking for bait' (CCXVI-227). The 'poissards' of the final title recall Turner's use of this made up word in the title of 'Calais Pier' (No.75). John Gage (exhibition catalogue, La Peinture Romantique Anglaise et Les Préraphaélites, Petit Palais, Paris, 1972, no.264) suggests that the picture is also in part a tribute, and a challenge, to the memory of Bonington, who had died in 1828 and the contents of whose studio, including a number of beach scenes at Calais, had been sold in London in June 1829.

The painting was well received and even the Morning Chronicle for 3 May 1830, which attacked Turner's 1830 exhibits for their lack of finish and for "taking an unpardonable liberty with the public', allowed that 'Calais Sands' was 'perhaps the only one excusable in its slightness, - it is literally nothing in labour, but extraordinary in art' . Even so it was not sold at the time, but it was later among the eight pictures bought for £ 500 each by the Birmingham steel-pen manufacturer turned picture-dealer Joseph Gillott, who retained it in his own collection.