The seascape depicts ships sailing under the light of a sun that is about to set. On the right side, a sailboat sails along the sea while in the background on the left two other vessels can be seen. Three seagulls fly in the sky, positioned in correspondence of the ships: one above the sailboat on the right and two on the left. In the center of the composition, the sun dominates, its light reflecting on the waves of the sea. The sky is in the shades of sunset. The scene exudes a calmness that is often found in the works of the artist's last period, who remained faithful to the current of romanticism, adopting elements from other artistic schools such as plein air or realism.

Towards the end of his life, Ivan Aivazovsky (1817 – 1900), who had returned and settled in his homeland, Feodosia in Crimea, devoted himself to a painting in which he not only maintained his familiar style and skills, but often surpassed them. With unparalleled technique, he uniquely depicted the sky and the sea, creating a school in this particular type of painting. The playwright Anton Tsekhov had popularized the saying “worthy of Aivazovsky’s brush” which was used to describe a creation that was of high beauty and technical perfection. The artist began his works first by creating the sky and then proceeded to depict the sea, which took him quite a while to complete. One of the most important elements of his work was his ability to depict the water element, something he achieved with the technique of lazure, that is, thin layers of color painted one on top of the other. This is a technique that requires special mastery and manages to give subtlety and depth to a subject that is one of the most difficult in the art of painting.