On a Wind (1911) is executed in egg tempera and watercolour laid onto canvas.  This is arguably the combination of media by which the artist produced his finest marine works; the watercolour accommodating the necessary layering of wash to create the deep translucent tones of blue and green in the ocean swell and the tempera providing the heightened whites required for surf and sea spray; both mediums further lending their respective strengths to the rendering of boats, sails and fishermen. At his home in Falmouth, Churchfield, Hemy kept chickens whose eggs provided the yolks for the tempera which gave his works their vibrancy of colour and allowed the painter to capture that substance of wave and surf. As a highly accomplished yachtsman and lifelong student of his subject matter, Hemy understood boats and boatmen like no other contemporary painter and braved the often tumultuous seas around the Cornish coast in pursuit of an honest depiction of their struggle. His mature paintings have an incredible sense of movement with the subject boat off-centre and often slashing through the frame as it does in On a Wind. As Hemy’s granddaughter, Margaret Powell describes in Master of the Sea, 'By experimenting with broad brushstrokes and developing a catalogue of marks, he conveys in paint, one brief moment caught from fleeting time.'