Storm on the Norwegian Coast

A raging storm in a coastal landscape. A sailboat is going under and only the mast can be seen.

Baade was a Norwegian romanticist, particularly known for portraits and landscape paintings. He specialized in moonlight paintings with naval motifs from the Norwegian coast. In this painting, he uses the light to achieve a dramatic effect, the mountain in the background as a sign of land and hope, and the dark waves as the doom of the sailors on the sinking ship.

Sometimes he would hang his paintings where you could see the moon upside down so that the moon would seem like an open eye which stared at the viewer. Baade spent most of his life in Münich where King Ludwig I of Bayern was one of his patrons. The king was so fond of his paintings that he approved a bust to be made of Baade which was placed in an art museum in Münich.