A Ship on the High Seas Caught by a Squall, Known as ‘The Gust’

Pendants were pictures made to hang as a pair, and this one has a partner in the Rijksmuseum, The Cannon Shot, painted by Willem van de Velde the Younger at the same time, around 1680. There, a warship lies in a flat calm. Here, a three-masted ship heels over on a high wave in a sudden squall. One of its masts has broken, a sail has worked loose and is flapping in the wind, and a smaller vessel rides the waves further off. The canvas is taller than it is wide, which gives most of the picture to the sky. Storm clouds darken the top, and a pale band of light breaks through behind the ship. At the masthead a small red pennant streams out in the wind.