The Shipwreck

A ship founders against jagged rocks as a storm lashes the coast, its masts splintering while survivors cling to the shore and struggle in the surf under a sky torn with wind. Claude-Joseph Vernet, the celebrated painter of marines, specialized in such tempests, balancing terror and spectacle with careful drama. Now in Washington, the Shipwreck offers the eighteenth-century thrill of the sublime - nature's overwhelming power witnessed from safety, tiny human figures pitted against the fury of sea and sky in a grand, theatrical catastrophe.