Ships in Distress off a Rocky Coast

Ludolf Backhuysen

National Gallery of Art

Beyond several craggy boulders that loom in the lower left corner of this horizontal painting, three sailing ships pitch wildly in crashing waves beneath towering clouds. At the center, a large ship tips sharply to our right with billowing ivory sails and two red, white, and blue striped flags whipping in the wind. White spray kicks up against the side of the boat and in the waves surrounding it. The sails of the second ship, to our right, are furled except for one that crashes down onto the deck. Tiny people scurry around inside the ship, which tilts steeply up on a high wave. The third ship floats beyond this, its sails also tied up. The top of a tall wooden mast along with a broken wooden pole poke up from emerald-green waves in the lower right corner, near a barrel and two bundles wrapped in cloth and tied with rope that bob nearby. One of the brown, jagged rocks to our left nearly spans the height of the painting while others jut from the water like crooked teeth. A bank of billowing, slate-gray clouds at the center of the sky separates a fog-gray sky and puffy clouds to our right from a patch of golden sunlight to our left, in the upper corner of the canvas. The artist signed and dated the work as if written on a rock at the bottom center of the canvas, “LBackh 1667.”