Twice Marooned

Harpers Magazine published Howard Pyle's first version of "Marooned" in 1887. The pirate is resigned to his fate, punished by abandonment on a tiny island, with nothing but his hat, a bottle of rum, and a rifle.

A wave crashes in the distance, and a second wave washes up in the foreground, making it clear that this a small piece of real estate.

Pyle came back to the idea in an easel painting from 1909, which wasn't reproduced until Henry Pitz's biography decades later. Pyle's fascination with composition shines through the refinements that he made more than thirty years after his first version.

He pushes everything to the extreme. The pirate's pose is simpler and smaller in the vast emptiness. His stuff is gathered at his feet rather than strewn across the beach. The far sea is only a sliver. A cloud of gulls flies high in the sky behind him, mocking him. His second version benefits from his lifetime of teaching and learning about storytelling composition.
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More about the painting at "The Art of Storytelling."
See the original of the painted version, along with lots of other Pyles, at the Delaware Art Museum.