Philippe-Jacques Loutherbourg specialised in disaster scenes such as shipwrecks. He was accepted as a trial member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in 1763, and four years later exhibited at the Paris Salon. There he showed this painting, which was the property of the Swedish ambassador, Gustaf Philip Creutz. The art critic Denis Diderot wrote a churlish review accusing Loutherbourg of imitating Claude Joseph Vernet.