Jan van Goyen

Jan van Goyen was the son of a shoemaker and started as an apprentice in Leiden, after which he studied art in Haarlem with Esaias van de Velde. At age 35, he established a permanent studio at The Hague. His landscape paintings rarely fetched high prices, but he made up for the modest value of individual pieces by increasing his production, painting thinly and quickly with a limited palette of inexpensive pigments. He died in 1656 in The Hague in debt, forcing his widow to sell their remaining furniture and paintings. Jan Steen was his student and son-in-law.