Ludolf Bakhuizen, 'An English Vessel and a Man-of-war in a Rough Sea', probably 1680s

Exciting pictures of ships pounded by high waves with a threatening sky overhead were Ludolf Bakhuizen’s speciality. He was one of the finest of the late seventeenth-century Dutch marine painters, and his skills in portraying the turbulence and unpredictability of the sea were famous.

The Netherlands was a maritime nation and a large number of Dutch men earned their living at sea. Bakhuizen was concerned with communicating the dangers sailors experienced to the people left on land, who depended on merchant and naval ships for their safety and prosperity.

In this picture, the gale blowing off the sea puts one vessel – flying an English flag at the stern and the St George’s cross on the main mast – at risk from the high cliffs in the background. Its sails belly out, stretched to the full, straining at the ropes that hold them. If the sailor at the helm steering the vessel isn't strong enough to keep it on course in such waves, it could be hurled against them and broken up like matchsticks.

A fitful streak of sunlight from a break in the clouds turns a white sail a sickly yellow, throwing across it a curved shadow of the mast, adding to the feeling of instability. It picks out the crew; a powerful back hunches forward over the wheel. Others stoop as if to secure a crate about to go over the side. Passengers huddle in the shadows in the stern, seemingly unconcerned – a reminder that for seventeenth-century Dutch people, travel by sea in all weathers was customary.

In a small rowing boat to the right, one man leans into the oars – the others seem relaxed in the face of his efforts. Beyond them another small boat scuds among the waves and other boats, one flying English flags, are tossed about on the waves. Away to the left, an English man-of-war (or battleship), cannon at the ready, rides out the gale. It heads away from shore towards the angry red sky on the horizon – perhaps a subtle reference to the recent wars between England and the Netherlands.

The ominous cliffs were at one time identified as the Kent coast at Deal; this has now been discounted and they are considered to be imaginary. There is no evidence to suggest that Bakhuizen ever came to England, but British ships would have been in and out of Dutch ports and waters, so he would have been familiar with these vessels.

The sea in Bakhuizen’s pictures has real depth and weight. The waves are painted with a rhythm and flow that is perhaps partly explained by his early career as a calligrapher writing in the seventeenth-century fashion, with decorative curls and curves to a page of script. Although he pays great attention to details of various vessels, he pays more to the sea itself, and to the atmosphere and emotion it evokes.