Ludolf Backhuysen
Encyclopedia
Willem van de Velde the Elder
Willem van de Velde the Elder was a Dutch Golden Age seascape painter.-Biographical Outline:Willem van de Velde, known as the Elder, a marine draughtsman and painter, was born in Leiden, the son of a Flemish skipper, Willem Willemsz. van de Velde, and is commonly said to have been bred to the sea...
(father and son) left for England in 1672.
Biography
He was born in EmdenEmden
Emden is a city and seaport in the northwest of Germany, on the river Ems. It is the main city of the region of East Frisia; in 2006, the city had a total population of 51,692.-History:...
, East Frisia
East Frisia
East Frisia or Eastern Friesland is a coastal region in the northwest of the German federal state of Lower Saxony....
, and came to Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
in about 1650, working as a merchant's clerk and a calligrapher. He discovered so strong a genius for painting that he relinquished the business and devoted himself to art from the late 1650s, initially in pen drawings. He studied first under Allart van Everdingen and then under Hendrik Dubbels
Hendrik Dubbels
Hendrick Dubbels or Hendrick Jacobsz. Dubbels and variants was a Dutch Golden Age painter of marine subjects and winter landscapes, who spent much of his career working in the studios of other marine artists....
, two eminent masters of the time, and soon became celebrated for his sea-pieces, which often had rough seas.
He was an ardent student of nature, and frequently exposed himself on the sea in an open boat in order to study the effects of storms. His compositions, which are numerous, are nearly all variations of one subject, the sea, and in a style peculiarly his own, marked by intense realism or faithful imitation of nature. In his later years Bakhuizen employed his skills in etching
Etching
Etching is the process of using strong acid or mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio in the metal...
; he also painted a few examples each of several other genres of painting, such as portraits, landscapes and genre painting
Genre painting
Genre works, also called genre scenes or genre views, are pictorial representations in any of various media that represent scenes or events from everyday life, such as markets, domestic settings, interiors, parties, inn scenes, and street scenes. Such representations may be realistic, imagined, or...
s.
During his life Bakhuizen was visited by Cosimo III de' Medici, Peter the Great and also worked for various German princes. In 1699 he opened a gallery on the top floor of the famous Amsterdam townhall
Royal Palace (Amsterdam)
The Royal Palace in Amsterdam is one of three palaces in the Netherlands which is at the disposal of Queen Beatrix by Act of Parliament. The palace was built as city hall during the Dutch Golden Age in the seventeenth century. The building became the royal palace of king Louis Napoleon and later...
. After a visit to England he died in Amsterdam on November 17, 1708.