Barend Cornelis Koekkoek

Barend Cornelis Koekkoek was a Dutch painter known as the prince of landscape painting in his day. Born in 1803 into a family of artists, he specialized in richly detailed Romantic landscapes, often wooded scenes with grand old trees, winding paths, and figures dwarfed by nature. He blended close observation with an idealized, orderly sense of beauty drawn from the old Dutch masters.

He settled in the German town of Kleve, near the Dutch border, where he ran a successful studio and art academy and attracted many pupils. His polished, glowing landscapes were prized by collectors across Europe. Koekkoek founded a whole dynasty of landscape painters, and his careful, sunlit woodlands remain popular with collectors of nineteenth century Dutch art.