Stormy Waters, Biarritz

A lone sailing ship cuts across choppy water, its tall masts tilting slightly as it braves the wind. A tiny red flag snaps at the very top, the single burst of warmth in a picture built from blues, greens, and cool silvery greys. Far off on the horizon sits a second ship, no more than a smudge, a quiet hint at just how empty and enormous the sea really is. The waves up front are the real star, rolling and curling with a life that feels almost audible.

Ivan Aivazovsky, who painted this in 1860, spent his career chasing the moods of the ocean and is often ranked among the finest sea painters ever to pick up a brush. Born in Crimea to an Armenian family, he worked in a way most artists never dared to try. Rather than setting up his easel by the shore, he painted from memory, pulling the shimmer of light on water straight out of his head. That approach gave his waves their strange transparency, as if you could reach right through the surface.

The title points to Biarritz, a town on France's Atlantic coast famous for its rough surf, a natural match for an artist who loved wild water. The feeling here is hushed yet uneasy, the kind of stillness that either follows a storm or warns one is coming. Just a ship and the ocean, nothing more, and that plainness is really the whole point.