“I like nothing better than to paint a storm,” wrote Mauritz de Haas, who, like his brother, Willem Frederik de Haas, was a well known painter of maritime scenes during the 19th century. After studying in The Hague, de Haas traveled to London, where he was influenced by the work of English watercolorists. He immigrated to New York in 1859, set up a studio in the legendary Tenth Street Studio Building, and was commissioned to paint naval battles during the Civil War (he had previously been the official artist of the Dutch Royal Navy). He is best known for his dramatic use of light and movement, and often based his oil paintings of the turbulent sea and majestic sailboats on direct observation—quickly filling in the sky with a palette knife and finishing the canvas by memory.