Barend Cornelis Koekkoek (1803-1862) received early lessons from his father, the marine painter Johannes Hermanus Koekkoek, and also studied at the Tekenacademie in Middelburg. He became a pupil at the Academy in Amsterdam and first contributed to an exhibition in 1820. In 1829 he won the gold medal of the Amsterdam society Felix Meritis ('Happy through Merit') with his Landscape with a Rainstorm Threatening (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam). In 1834 he moved permanently to Cleve in Germany, where he was recognised as the leading Romantic landscape painter of his generation. Koekkoek's work was frequently copied and forged during his lifetime. He took pains to sign all his pictures, and from 1847 he endeavoured to protect himself from forgers by issuing certificates of authenticity. As an important figure in Cleve's art milieu he founded a drawing academy and, in 1847, a society for the appreciation of art. In 1960 his house became the Städtisches Museum Haus Koekkoek, with a collection comprising many of the artist's paintings, drawings, and studies.

This landscape is one of a pair (RCIN 403681-2) depicting morning and evening, with a constrast between a stormy working day and a serene, restful sunset. Here there is a ruggedly-undulating landscape under a stormy sky, with a herdsman in the foreground walking along a rutted track; on the left large trees are blown by the wind; in the middle distance a ruined abbey on high ground rises above the surrounding trees. Both paintings combine elements from Roman and Dutch landscape painters of the 17th-Century, in this case Gaspard Dughet and Jacob van Ruisdael. The latter is the most obvious source for a Dutch artist and corresponds with a fashion for his work throughout the 19th century. The influence is seen here in the ominous massing of clouds, the sharp bursts of sunshine and the jagged forms of the trees. We see echoes of Dughet's Roman landscape in the structure of the landscape, with a ruin dominating the middle distance, and in the balanced pairing of two compositions (a common feature of Roman landscapes).