Northeaster

On the Maine coast, a “nor’easter” is a storm of exceptional violence and duration. It is a macro-scale extratropical cyclone in the western North Atlantic ocean. The name derives from the direction of the strongest winds that will be hitting an eastern seaboard of the northern hemisphere: as a cyclonic air mass rotates counterclockwise, winds tend to blow northeast-to-southwest over the region covered by the northwest quadrant of the cyclone. When Homer first showed this canvas in 1895, it included two men in foul-weather gear crouching on the rocks below a smaller column of spray. Even though the painting was well received and purchased by a leading collector of American art—George Hearn, Homer reworked it to powerful effect.

P.S. Sea during a storm is scenery for Rembrandt's Christ in The Storm on the Sea of Galilee. Read about the painting of the Dutch master here.