A merchant ship lies wrecked in heavy surf on a rocky coast, her masts broken and her rigging tangled, as pale green and white waves break over the hull and the dark rocks around it. A few tiny figures gather on the rocks at the left. Heavy storm clouds hang over the scene, with a narrow band of pinkish light low on the horizon beside a bare, pale headland. Johan Christian Dahl, who was born in Bergen but based himself in Dresden, where he grew close to Caspar David Friedrich and died in 1857, dated this canvas 1832, according to the Nasjonalmuseet.

He came back to the subject several times: the museum's record points to a related work of 1831, and the Hamburger Kunsthalle lists its own Dahl Shipwreck on the Norwegian Coast among its highlights. This canvas came to the museum in 1931 as a bequest from Louise and Johs. G. Heftye.

It was shown in Oslo in 2014 and 2015 in Alone with Nature, an exhibition that set Dahl's landscapes beside Friedrich's. It is in the Nasjonalmuseet in Oslo.