A Shipwreck in Stormy Seas ('Tempête')

In 1757 the Irish writer Edmund Burke published an essay that split pleasure in two. The beautiful was smooth, gentle and calm. The sublime came from things vast, dark and dangerous, terror enjoyed from a safe distance. Vernet's paired calms and storms put both on one wall, and this is the storm, painted in 1773 as the companion to a tranquil sunset. Lightning breaks through black cloud, two ships roll in the swell, and a third has already been smashed against the rocks. On the shore survivors haul cargo out of the surf, and a small group bends over a woman who has lost consciousness. Behind them a lighthouse stands on its headland, and further off, under a gap in the cloud, a stretch of hillside is already in sunlight.