Storm Off a Sea Coast
painting by Jacob van Ruisdael

Storm Off a Sea Coast, also known as The Breakwater, is a 1670 oil on canvas painting by the Dutch Golden Age painter Jacob van Ruisdael. It is in the collection of the Louvre in Paris.
The painting is called A Storm at Sea Off the Dykes of Holland in the 1911 catalogue raisonné compiled by Cornelis Hofstede de Groot, in which it is catalogue number 961. De Groot described the scene: "On the right is a dyke lined with piles, beyond which is a fisherman's cottage with a few trees. On the left corner of the dyke, great waves are breaking. Farther back rise the masts of several large vessels, as well as the stern with a Dutch flag." The painting is called Storm Off a Sea Coast in Slive's 2001 catalogue raisonné of Ruisdael, in which it is given catalogue number 653.
In the 19th century, Vincent van Gogh called this painting by Ruisdael, along with The Bush and Ray of Light, "magnificent". The Louvre has in French: "L'Estacade ou Gros temps sur une digue de Hollande, dit aussi Une tempête". Its inventory number is INV. 1818. Its dimensions are 110 cm x 160 cm.
The public source identifies “Storm Off a Sea Coast” as painting by Jacob van Ruisdael. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Storm, Coast and painting.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q20886860. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1670, 1911, 2001 and 1818.
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This entry incorporates text from “Storm Off a Sea Coast” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.