Stormy Sea with Sailing Vessels, c.1668 Jacob van Ruisdael (c.1628-1682)

We create our paintings with museum quality and covering the highest academic standards. Once we get your order, it will be entirely hand-painted with oil on canvas. All the materials we use are the highest level, being totally artist graded painting materials and linen canvas.

We will add 1.6" (4 cm) additional blank canvas all over the painting for stretching.

High quality and detailing in every inch are time consuming. The reproduction of Jacob van Ruisdael also needs time to dry in order to be completely ready for shipping, as this is crucial to not be damaged during transportation.
Based on the size, level of detail and complexity we need 8-9 weeks to complete the process.

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We not stretch and frame our oil paintings due to several reasons:
Painting reproduction is a high quality expensive product, which we cannot risk to damage by sending it being stretched.
Also, there are postal restrictions, regarding the size of the shipment.
Additionally, due to the dimensions of the stretched canvas, the shipment price may exceed the price of the product itself.

You can stretch and frame your painting in your local frame-shop.

Once the painting Stormy Sea with Sailing Vessels is ready and dry, it will be shipped to your delivery address. The canvas will be rolled-up in a secure postal tube.

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A bruised ceiling of cloud takes over, heaped up in grey upon grey, with only a rinsed patch of blue trying to breathe at the upper left. That sky is not backdrop but protagonist. Ruisdael lets it occupy most of the canvas, as if the weather has pushed everything else – sea, ships, even human intention – into a thin, precarious strip.

Below, the water is dark and worked hard. Short, clipped strokes create a choppy skin, then suddenly lengthen into a wave that rises and breaks. Notice how the foam is laid on in quick, pale touches, almost dry in places, so it sits lightly on the heavy colour beneath. One detail I love – and you have to look for it – is the fine diagonal streaking that skims across the foreground sea, like wind-driven spray or rain, barely there but persuasive.

The largest vessel, its brown sail slanting under pressure, sits in the middle distance and yet feels oddly vulnerable. A sweeping shadow cast by the cloud – crosses it, denying it any heroic spotlight. Out on the horizon, a faint smear of land and the suggestion of a city keep the scene tethered to the Dutch Republic’s working world, but only just. More immediate is the maritime marker on the right: a cluster of wooden posts and a buoy, where white water smashes and churns. Listen to it, in your mind. It’s the sound of cold salt and timber, of weighty water hitting resistance.

Ruisdael’s marines are fewer than his forests and dunes, but they carry the same emotional intelligence: nature as a presence with its own agenda. Perhaps that is the unexpected tenderness here: amid all the menace, the distant light still opens in bands, as if the world keeps offering brief permissions to continue. Stormy Sea with Sailing Vessels (c.1668) at Thyssen-Bornemisza Madrid leaves you steadying yourself – not frightened, exactly, but awake.