According to Henry McConnell, the picture's first owner, it was 'painted at my special suggestion' (letter of 28 May 186I to John Taylor, who seems to have bought the picture from McConnell in 1849). McConnel bought the painting of Venice exhibited at the Royal Academy the previous year (almost certainly the 'Venice: Dogana and San Giorgio Maggiore' also in Washington; repr. Rothenstein and Butlin 1964, pl.98) and it is probable that a deliberate contrast was planned between the two pictures. The Venetian picture, in Turner's standard three-foot, four-foot format, shows a clear light and calm activity at a far remove from the smoky haze and industrial bustle of 'Keelmen', in which Turner contrasted moonlight and man-made fires just as he had in his very first exhibited oil painting. The scene is on the Tyne, which had already been shown with its rising smoke in two watercolours of 'Shields, on the River Tyne' and 'Newcastle-on-Tyne' engraved for the Rivers of England in 1823 (T.B.CCVIII- V and K; see No.241).

'Keelmen' met with much the same criticism as 'The Burning of the House of Lords and Commons' : it was too light. 'The full moon', wrote the Spectator for 9 May 1835, 'pours a flood of silver radiance that fills the scene, excepting the dusky hue of colliers, with the light and smoke of the beacons on the riverside. The aerial brilliancy of the effect is surprising. The tone seems too like daylight; but a year or two hence it will be as bright and true a night scene as ever - or rather never was painted'. The Literary Gazette of the same date thought the treatment inappropriate: 'And such a night! - a flood of glorious moonlight wasted upon dingy coal-whippers, instead of conducting lovers to the appointed bower'. But as usual there was a feeling that Turner had brought it off: 'At the first glance, the word "extravagant" rose to our lips,' reported the Athenaeum for 23 May, 'but as we lingered before the scene, other feelings triumphed, and we could not help pronouncing it a striking, if not wondrous performance? The same day The Times called it 'One of those masterly productions by which the artist contrives to convey very striking effects with just so much of adherence to nature as prevents one from saying they are merely fanciful'.