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Before me, the ocean was breathing. It wasn’t in a storm—not today. But one bolder wave broke nearby, and its salty spray hit my face like a sudden call.
It was in that moment, with the taste of salt on my lips and my gaze fixed on the horizon, that the idea struck me: how many artists have tried to capture the essence of the ocean—whether in its stillness or its fury—on canvas?
Thus was born a top ten of the most iconic paintings depicting the sea, in all its shades: calm, meditative, romantic, or majestic. Ten unforgettable works, each accompanied by anecdotes and curiosities that reveal the eternal allure of the sea through the eyes of art.
Caspar David Friedrich, Ship in the Arctic Ocean, 1798, oil on canvas, 29×21 cm, Kunsthalle, Hamburg.
1. Caspar David Friedrich, Ship in the Arctic Ocean, 1798 3b3j3t
In this small yet powerful canvas from 1798, Caspar David Friedrich takes us to a remote and silent place: an Arctic Ocean scattered with ice, where a ship lies trapped and tilted— a solitary witness to the relentless force of nature.
What is striking is not just the scene—tragic yet composed—but the artist’s inner vision: for Friedrich, nature is never merely a backdrop, but a revelation of the divine. Raised in a strict Lutheran household and marked by the early loss of several family (including a brother who died saving him from a frozen lake), Friedrich did not paint what he saw, but what he felt before the vastness of the world.
This painting, created when he was just 24 years old, already reveals the Romantic vision that would make him famous: the smallness of man in the face of the infinite.
Théodore Géricault, The Raft of the Medusa, 1818–1819, oil on canvas, 491×716 cm, Louvre Museum, Paris
2. Théodore Géricault, The Raft of the Medusa, 1818–1819 593jy
Amid the stormy waves of the ocean, there is no certain salvation. Only one man—an African figure perched atop a human pyramid—waves a cloth in desperation, hoping someone will see him. Around him lie corpses, dying men, and those already resigned to their fate. This is the tragic and monumental heart of The Raft of the Medusa, an absolute masterpiece of Romanticism.
At just twenty-seven, Géricault chose a shocking and contemporary event as his subject: the shipwreck of the French frigate Méduse, whose commanders abandoned ship, leaving 147 people stranded on a makeshift raft. After thirteen days adrift, only fifteen survived—some resorting to cannibalism.
To paint it, the artist pushed himself to extremes: he studied corpses, visited morgues, and even kept severed heads and amputated limbs in his studio to capture the anatomical horror of death with precision. The canvas, as large as a wall (almost 5 by 7 meters!), struck like lightning at the 1819 Salon—earning applause, scandal, and fierce controversy. But it made history.
Katsushika Hokusai, The Great Wave off Kanagawa, 1830, woodblock print, 26×38 cm
3. Katsushika Hokusai, The Great Wave off Kanagawa, 1830 614x4a
More than a wave, it’s a sea monster made of water and silence. It rises like a white claw about to seize three fragile fishing boats, while in the background, calm and distant, Mount Fuji watches it all with eternal serenity. The Great Wave off Kanagawa is the most famous work of Japanese art—and one of the most reproduced images in the world.
Created by Hokusai as part of the series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, this woodblock print contains something universal: the terror and beauty of the sea, the infinitely vast against the infinitely small. But it also has something strikingly modern—European perspective, circular motion, and that deep, vibrant hue: Prussian blue, a pigment that entered Japan through trade with the West.
A surprising anecdote? Hokusai was over 70 when he created it, and signed the piece with an ironic name: “The Old Man Mad About Painting.” He moved house 93 times to avoid cleaning, and every morning he would draw a dragon and throw it out the window for good luck
William Turner, The Slave Ship, 1840, oil on canvas, 90×122 cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
4. William Turner, The Slave Ship, 1840 p1048
At first glance, it seems like nothing more than a blazing sunset—a sea ignited in gold, red, and purple, while a ship sails off into a storm. But look closer, beneath the waves, and human bodies begin to appear—chains, severed limbs, drifting among hungry fish. It’s a subtle horror, hidden in the light. This is The Slave Ship.
With this painting, Joseph Mallord William Turner detonates the Romantic style. He drew inspiration from a real event: in 1781, the captain of the slave ship Zong ordered 133 sick and dying enslaved Africans to be thrown overboard to collect insurance money. Turner exhibited the painting in 1840, during the Anti-Slavery Society's campaign, and accompanied it with a verse of his own:
"Hope, Hope, fallacious Hope!
Where is thy market now?"
But the painting’s power lies not only in its denunciation—it’s also in the form. The ocean is nearly abstract, swirling, overwhelming—anticipating by a century the emotional vortices of Abstract Expressionism. Here, the paint becomes pure emotion, a natural force that swallows human evil.
A powerful anecdote: the critic John Ruskin, the painting’s first owner, said,
"If I were to preserve Turner’s immortality in a single work, I would choose this one."
Édouard Manet, Rochefort's Escape, 1881, oil on canvas, 80×73 cm, Musée d’Orsay, Paris
5. Édouard Manet, Rochefort's Escape, 1881 2k2i1h
In the midst of a choppy, metallic sea, a small boat moves through trembling waves. Four figures struggle against the current: one of them, Henri Rochefort, rows from the stern, his hair blowing in the wind—recognizable only to those who know where to look. Rochefort's Escape is a painting that transforms political reportage into a dramatic moment of suspended tension.
In 1874, the Republican journalist Rochefort, sentenced to forced labor for ing the Paris Commune, staged a daring escape from a penal colony aboard a fragile rowboat. Six years later, with political freedom restored, Manet chose to depict that heroic—or perhaps illusory—act, breaking the conventions of historical painting.
No mythological scenes, no grandiose compositions: here, history is a mere speck in the sea. The real protagonist is the water, brought to life with quick, restless Impressionist brushstrokes that fill the canvas to the top. A sense of danger, isolation, and uncertainty pervades the work.
Claude Monet, Rocks at Port-Goulphar, Belle Île, 1886, oil on canvas
6. Claude Monet, Rocks at Port-Goulphar, Belle Île, 1886 3n4k6p
In 1886, Claude Monet arrived at Belle-Île, a remote Breton island where the ocean crashes against wild, jagged cliffs. He stayed for over two months—twice as long as planned—captivated by the dramatic landscape he himself described as “gloomy, terrifying, and beautiful.” From this experience came a series of paintings, including Rocks at Port-Goulphar.
Here, Monet no longer paints just light or breeze. The rocks become characters. Sculpted with thick brushstrokes in reds and greens, the craggy mass dominates the canvas. The water is not still or reflective—it’s movement, a living surface vibrating with blues, violets, and whites.
The painting is an ode to the primal force of nature: there are no human figures, only the eternal dialogue between sea and stone. The vertical, close-up composition—almost devoid of sky—immerses the viewer in the island’s core, among cracks and reflections, where space seems to tighten and tremble.
In Brittany, Monet leaves behind all traces of the picturesque: he chases the atmospheric essence of a raw and imposing nature. This work anticipates his famous series (like the haystacks and water lilies) and marks a decisive step toward abstraction.
John Singer Sargent, Atlantic Storm, 1876
7. John Singer Sargent, Atlantic Storm, 1876 2a1p3a
Unlike John Singer Sargent’s more typical and celebrated society portraits, here the subject is not human but natural—impersonal and overwhelming: the ocean in the midst of a storm.
The viewer stands at the stern of the ship, caught in the dynamic surge of the waves. The hull slices through the sea, leaving a luminous trail behind, while the rest of the water is dark, swollen, and menacing. The distant viewpoint and low angle convey the sense of the ship being crushed by the sheer force of the sea, with waves that rise like watery mountains, ready to engulf everything.
Quick brushstrokes and a palette leaning toward deep blues and icy whites evoke urgency, vertigo, and unease. This is no mythological or heroic tale—it is a visual chronicle of what it feels like to be in the middle of the Atlantic: small and vulnerable.
This work reveals the influence of Impressionism, but also that of Turner in its dramatic portrayal of the elements. It is a bridge between visceral realism and romantic sensibility—an “atmospheric self-portrait” that foreshadows the painter’s future greatness.
Paul Signac, Setting Sun, Sardine Fishing, Adagio, Opus 221 from the series The Sea, The Boats, Concarneau, 1891, oil on canvas, 65×81 cm, MoMA, New York
8. Paul Signac, Setting Sun, Sardine Fishing, Adagio, 1891 5o2ng
In this 1891 painting, Paul Signac masterfully applies the pointillist technique, born with Georges Seurat and later developed by Signac himself into a more personal, vibrant, and lyrical variation. The subject is simple and orderly: a stretch of water dotted with fishing boats, lit by a fiery sunset, awaiting the start of the nightly sardine catch.
The title, with the addition of "Adagio," immediately suggests a musical and contemplative interpretation. The boats do not move; they are suspended between light and silence, like notes on a visual score in which chromatic alternation creates harmony.
The sea and sky are rendered through pure dots of color, not mixed on the palette but allowed to blend directly in the viewer’s eye—a technique that evokes both the science of perception and the spirituality of painting. Cool blue tones dissolve into the warm yellows of sunset, creating a visual echo that is both real and ideal.
The viewpoint is elevated and distant, with no narrative emphasis, almost abstract. There is no pathos, no drama—only time suspended between day and night, work and waiting. It is the ocean as musical score and meditation, in a vision that merges painting, music, and science.
Winslow Homer, The Gulf Stream, 1899, oil on canvas, 71×124 cm, The MET, New York
9. Winslow Homer, The Gulf Stream, 1899 6t2a5h
In this grand and haunting work, Winslow Homer presents one of the most powerful images in American painting: a Black man adrift on a small, dismasted boat, surrounded by menacing sharks under a storm-laden sky. The sea is dark and unforgiving, yet the man stares into the distance with composure, almost defying his fate with stoic calm.
At the center of the painting, the human figure becomes a symbol—of resilience, solitude, and dignity. He does not panic or defend himself; he simply watches. All around him, details heighten the tension: a distant ship, perhaps salvation, but out of reach; a looming waterspout; torn sails, tangled ropes, and finally, scattered stalks of sugarcane on the deck—a subtle but powerful reference to colonial history and the transatlantic slave trade.
Joaquín Sorolla, Breakwater, San Sebastian, 1918
10. Joaquín Sorolla, Breakwater, San Sebastian, 1918 t4n4p
With vibrant, luminous brushstrokes, Sorolla—the “painter of light”—captures the overwhelming dynamism of the Atlantic Ocean crashing against the cliffs of San Sebastián, while a group of elegant bourgeois onlookers stand iring the spectacle. The scene, seemingly simple, conceals a subtle tension between nature and civilization, energy and stillness, force and contemplation.
The grey-green water, whipped by the wind, dominates nearly the entire canvas with an enveloping effect. The leaden sky and foaming waves create a spectacular contrast with the calm, orderly figures of the spectators, who appear unaware of—or shielded from—the sea’s fury, separated by a fragile railing. The composition becomes a silent metaphor for modern life: humanity watching the natural world from a safe distance, enjoying its beauty without sharing in its danger.
Sorolla, master of light and movement, makes the waves almost musical, while the human figures are rendered with swift, economical touches. His style, close to Impressionism but even more personal, conveys the fleeting nature of perception and the sensory power of the moment.
Olimpia Gaia Martinelli 
