An imposing steamship occupies the surface of the painting, which is anchored with its engines running as evidenced by the smoke coming out of its funnel. To its right, a group of boats has approached it, carrying people who are about to board the ship to travel with it. A figure appears to be climbing the ladder on the side in order to board. In the background on the left, the coast and the silhouette of a sailboat can be seen, which are rendered abstractly and serve to complete the composition but also to frame the main subject of the painting, the steamship. The waters of the sea are calm and there is no wind. Vassilios Hatzis (1870 – 1915) studied at the School of Fine Arts, with Nikiforos Lytras and Konstantinos Volanakis as his teachers. In fact, the latter was his greatest influence, as Hatzis mainly dealt with seascapes in the footsteps of his beloved teacher. Particularly in the works of his first period, Hatzis adopts familiar compositions of his teacher in which he does not engage in sterile copying, but incorporates a personal idiom into them. Although he is fascinated by the Munich School, in terms of the use of color and technical perfection, he himself is often not so descriptive, making freer use of his brush.
