The view depicts the Amalfi coast with a stormy sea.

Rebell chose the fury of the sea as the subject of so many of his paintings, to the point of leading his contemporaries to hypothesise that he had experienced the dangers of the sea storms first-hand.

The artist painted the stormy sea set against various scenes of the Neapolitan and Sorrento coasts. In our watercolour, Amalfi seems to be relegated in the background of the scene, while the real protagonists of the scene are the great waves crashing on the rocks and the rays of the sun piercing the clouds.

The only human presence is witnessed by a sailing ship plying the sea on the horizon.

Rebell had already painted the stormy sea near the Capuchin monastery in Amalfi in 1813 (Pescara Fondazione Di Persio) and it is likely that our sheet was executed in the same year and with the same beach as the place of observation.

Josef Rebell was born in Vienna in 1787.

From 1799 Joseph Rebell attended courses in architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna; but in 1807 he changed his direction, attracted by landscape painting which he began to study by attending the course of Michael Wutky (1739-1822).

Joseph Rebell made a trip to Switzerland in 1809, then went on to Milan, where he obtained protection from Viceroy Eugene de Beauharnais who commissioned four Battle Views from him in 1810. He then travelled to Naples in 1812 and, thanks to Beauharnais' introduction, obtained a commission from Queen Caroline Bonaparte for a series of thirteen Views of Naples and its surroundings.

The appreciation of the Austrian painter by Murat and his wife Caroline was unanimous. Rebell also painted many other landscapes for members of the local aristocracy.

In 1815, after the fall and execution of Joachim Murat Rebell found refuge in Rome, where he stayed until 1824. He continued to paint views of Naples and the islands of the Gulf, which were in great demand on the market.

In 1819, he presented a series of Italian landscapes at an exhibition in the Palazzo Caffarelli in Rome, which were appreciated by Emperor Franz II of Habsburg-Lorraine, who commissioned other works from him.

Thanks to his good relations with the emperor, in 1824 Rebell was called to direct the Gemaldegalerie in Vienna for which he left Italy for good to continue his flourishing career in his homeland.

He died in Dresden in 1828, aged only forty-seven.