If one wants to capture a rock with paint on a canvas, the eye can take time to study, translate, and correct by constantly comparing, moving to and fro between the canvas and the subject. Not so with surf breaking at the shoreline: every instant gives rise to a different interplay of water, wind, and light. Nevertheless, a few years before the first successful photographic processes, Schirmer, who was a young professor at the Düsseldorf Art Academy at the time, succeeded in capturing this spectacle of nature in a precise, materially and atmospherically convincing artwork.