The painting shows the beach at Scheveningen, on the North Sea coast a few miles from The Hague, on a stormy day on 21 or 22 August 1882.

The painting was made quickly, en plein air, on an easel at the beach, with the wind whipping up sand and nearly blowing Van Gogh off his feet.

The composition is broken into three horizontal zones: a threatening grey sky with dark roiling clouds, the greenish-grey sea with lines of white-capped waves crashing onto the shore, and the beach and sand dunes in browns, oranges, yellows and greens.

A number of people are on the beach, some fishwives in their white bonnets, watching as a group of men with horses and a cart are about to pull on a rope attached to a waiting fishing boat to bring it safely ashore.

Its recovery, without its original frame, from under the kitchen floor of a villa associated with Camorra gang boss Raffaele Imperiale was not announced until September 2016.