This painting shows a Dutch three-master on a rough sea. The Dutch ship is shown, in the middle-distance, heeling in the water. Churning waves, whipped up by a stiff offshore breeze from left to right, break against it. Two other ships can be seen on the left and right of the large vessel. Characteristically, the sea is brightly sunlit and painted with vivid white highlights. Sea and sky are rendered as bright, flat areas of colour on the right. The human element of this painting takes precedence here. A rocky outcrop peppered with scrubby vegetation and bare tree-trunks emerges, in the foreground, on the left. Standing upon these bare rocks and facing the water are five modestly dressed men while a sixth man is just visible in a clearing to the left. The group huddles against the wind. Both the figures in the painting and the viewer are united in surveying the open sea. One figure holds a red flag and their presence on the rocks underlines the danger which threatens the ship. A wooden cross has been positioned on the outcrop above them, with a jagged tree above.

A commemorative wooden cross precariously erected on the cliffs is a motif which frequently recurs in the work of Pieter Mulier (BHC0822). The cross may, within a narrative frame of reference, allude to a sailor or an entire ship which may have perished – a symbol of the ultimate transience of human life. Equally it may refer to the rock in which it is embedded. The rock – which may symbolise the Church and Christian faith – remains strong and constant in the face of unpredictable, often violent storms. Also this resolution and steadfastness could apply to the individual. A contemporary audience would no doubt have been familiar with the concept of navigatio vitae to which the painting possibly refers: the sea as a symbol of man’s birth, life and death. Ultimately these motifs serve as visual metaphors for the vulnerability of man against nature, in which he will inevitably perish, but with the hope of Christian salvation.

In this painting Mulier has adopted the grey tonal palette of the Dutch realist school, since the painting is predominantly composed of sky with subtly depicted grey clouds. The artist has used highly conventionalised and typical Flemish stormscape motifs, to create an image that is more than just a faithful rendering of the natural world through its emphasis on the inherent power of the sea as a metaphor. The prominent ship is accurately and fastidiously painted, replicating both the appearance and position of the ship in Mulier’s sketch, ‘Ships in a Breeze’ in the Albertina, Vienna. This sketch was probably a preparatory drawing from which the composition of the painting was developed. Similarly it depicts an open sea with sprawling dark clouds gathering in the sky above it.

The artist, Pieter Mulier the Elder, was born in Haarlem in around 1600. His family were cloth-weavers and refugees from Flanders. Details surrounding his life are meagre. Although archival records refer to his marriage, in 1635, to Haarlem-born Maycke de Great with whom he had at least two children. Their son, Pieter Mulier the Younger, born two years later, was also a marine painter noted for his storm scenes. He worked in Italy under the name ‘Cavaliere Tempesta’. However nothing is known about Pieter Mulier the Elder’s artistic training. Although he became a member of the Haarlem Guild of St Luke in 1638 and, later, took on younger pupils. He continued to work consistently in Haarlem throughout the 1640s and 1650s. He is known to have accumulated substantial personal debts as a result of excessive drinking. He died in Haarlem. The exact year of his death is unknown. He has placed his initials on the rocks to the left.