An elegant and monumental achievement, Van Gogh's Fishing Boats at Sea is one of a series of paintings the artist made in 1888 during an excursion to a small seaside village on the Mediterranean. Situated a short distance from his residence at Arles in Provence, the week-long trip was one of a number of attempts to alleviate his worsening health problems. This series of seascapes, featuring Fishing Boats On The Beach At Saintes Maries and various reproductions of village life, contrasted the anguish of his condition and stood as a tragic beacon of hope at the end of a prodigious life.

A world away from the fraught, mood-swings of his Arles landscapes, Van Gogh's Fishing Boats at Sea is a seemingly sparse work densely populated with overlapping layers of meaning and movement. Baring a diverse pool of influences including an analytic understanding of the formal qualities of Hiroshige, one of the great masters of the woodcut print technique known as Ukiyo-e. He was also influenced by the Pointillism of Georges Seurat, and the psychological intensity of the Impressionists, Fishing Boats at Sea is a fluid and experiential expression of a serene scene and seemingly a vivid reproduction of life.

With no trace of underdrawings, the painting suggests it was rendered en plein air — meaning he painted at the location. Evidence of flecks of sand beneath the oil paint would confirm this; the wind from the sea must have blown grains into the artist's palette board. The tactile clusters of paint increase as the eye moves towards the beachfront giving a remarkable impression of presence and distance. The overlapping waves of the Mediterranean are created through a swift and masterful use of a palette knife, supremely confident brush-strokes, and surprising stabs of color.

Van Gogh portrays the sea in the forefront in bold colors of blue, green, yellow and black. The shore is filled with movement and a mix of colors, and as the sea gets farther from the viewer, the strokes are calmer, and he limits the colors to blue and black. There are two boats on the second plan of the composition, positioned on the top left corner. Their sails exceed the edge of the canvas, and the artist depicted men pulling up their fishing nets. The boats as red and brown, and their sail is yellow-white, as the sun shines upon them. There are many other sailboats in the distant horizon, and the black and blue sky is mostly cloudy.