How is Alma Mahler portrayed in Oskar Kokoschka’s painting The Tempest?

In Oskar Kokoschka’s 1914 painting The Tempest (also known as Die Windsbraut), Alma Mahler is portrayed resting alongside the artist within a large cockleshell.12

Set against a turbulent, swirling background of a raging sea, the composition is rendered in shades of blue and gray using large, loose brushstrokes. The painting reflects the intense, "unquiet" nature of the three-year affair between Kokoschka and Mahler, illustrating the artist's deep emotional involvement with his subject. Rather than a static portrait, the work captures the couple in a state of motion, with the entire composition appearing to spin and swirl, emphasizing the emotional volatility of their relationship during that period.2