Goyen, Jan van

Born Jan. 13, 1596, in Leiden; died Apr. 27, 1656, in The Hague. Dutch landscape painter.

Van Goyen studied with E. van de Velde in Haarlem in 1616 and 1617. He began to work in Leiden in 1618 and in The Hague in 1634. During his mature years (beginning in 1640) he painted misty landscapes in tones of brown and gray, and views of slow-flowing rivers and canals with cities and villages on their low banks, under boundless skies occupying two-thirds of the painting (The Maas River Near Dordrecht, 1643, in the Hermitage, Leningrad; View of the Vaal River Near Neimegen, 1649, in the A. S. Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow; View on the Maas River, 1645, in the Hermitage, Leningrad; and The Mouth of the River, 1655, in Mauritshuis, in The Hague). He was one of the creators of the Dutch school of realistic landscape painting in the 17th century, and he also did some etchings.