An astonishing phenomenon: a Munich painter devotes his life almost exclusively to maritime topics. Painters like Weiss show how specialized the market was as early as the 19th century and that interest in such motifs was also strong in Munich at that time.

For his patron Maximilian Herzog von Leuchtenberg, he painted a “seashore with a lighthouse” (Neue Pinakothek, Munich), to which our painting is attached. The thematic tradition of the late 18th century is still palpable in the drama of the pictorial events, but the influence of the Düsseldorf School of Painting, especially Andreas Achenbach's, becomes clear in the light-saturated, sharply illuminated play of waves and clouds....