A great wave curls in the foreground, its crest glowing turquoise and breaking into white foam against a tall wall of dark rock. Behind it, more headlands fade into haze along a restless sea.

Shafts of golden sunlight push through a bruised, brooding sky and scatter across the water. Heavy impasto strokes, laid on as if with a palette knife, give the clouds, cliffs and spray a rough, sculpted surface.