Port Sanilac Light placement and the unique shape were dictated by and created because of budgetary constraints (Congress appropriated only half the money requested). Designed by Eleventh District Engineer Captain Charles E. L. B. Davis, the design has been called "both unique and architecturally significant in its elegance." The tower is white with a red roof. This "handsome" lighthouse shares its design with only one other, Ile Aux Galets, also known as Skilligallee Island Light, on Lake Michigan. The Port Sanilac Light tower is capped with a cast iron lantern room, which still houses a fourth order Fresnel lens manufactured by Barbier and
Light and Colour (Goethe's Theory) – The Morning after the Deluge – Moses Writing the Book of Genesis painting is a reference to Goethe’s "Theory of Colour", which explains the colour yellow as being the first colour transmitted from light. The form of the painting is circular, symbolising the construction of the human eye, changing the focus of a typical linear splitting of space to a more subjective portrayal. The colour yellow is typically optimistic, but Turner captures the negativity of yellow by attaching the colour to a light that is subject to change. The morning sun aspect of the colour is something transient. "Light and Colour" was among three paintings stolen from a Frankfurt museum in 1994.