William Howe Downes, Homer's first biographer, had firsthand knowledge of the coast at Prouts Neck, Maine. He described this canvas as follows: The design is of a rigid simplicity. We are looking seaward from the cliffs at Prouts Neck on a day of storm. At our feet the dark ledges are streaming with milky retreating foam, and just beyond them a monster wave raises its huge bulk as it comes shoreward with an exuberant look of tremendous power. Still further out to sea, in the gray mist, loom the oncoming lines of wave upon wave, until the horizon loses itself in a far turmoil of dimly seen billows.