Ludolf Backhuysen (1630 – 1708)
Backhuysen was a German-born Dutch Golden Age painter. He was born in Gioningen and came to Amsterdam in about 1650, working as a merchant’s clerk and a calligrapher. He discovered a passion for painting and devoted himself to art from the late 1650s. Backhuysen’s style was marked by intense realism, and his compositions are nearly all variations of one subject: the sea. At one point in the mid-1600s, he was the most famous painter in Holland. He painted up until his death in Amsterdam in 1708.