Storm Clouds over the Sea
This conversation is connected to Storm Clouds over the Sea.
A small vessel under a tawny sail heels through dark, choppy water, with two or three more ships barely visible behind it. The sky is enormous, a mass of dark brown-gray storm clouds lit from behind by a break of pale yellow light at the upper right. The sea below is nearly black, with whitecaps picked out in short, sharp strokes. Ruisdael was the greatest Dutch landscape painter of the 17th century, and his marine paintings are less well known than his windmills and waterfalls, but they share the same dramatic relationship between sky and ground.