Jan van de Velde II

c.1593-1641 Dutch

Master of Dutch landscape etchings

Jan van de Velde the younger was a Dutch Golden Age painter and engraver of animal, landscape and still-life subjects. He was the son of Jan van de Velde the Elder and the father of the still life painter Jan Jansz van de Velde. Van de Velde was born in either Delft or Rotterdam, to calligrapher Jan van de Velde the Elder from Antwerp and Maijcken Van Bracht from Turnhout. He was apprenticed to engraver Jacob Matham in 1613, entered the Haarlem guild in 1614, and then probably visited Italy. He is better known for his etching and engraving than for his painting. According to Houbraken, he was the brother of Esaias van de Velde and Willem van de Velde the Elder, but according to John Denison Champlin, Esaias was his cousin, and he was no relation at all to the family of Willem. He died in Enkhuizen. In 1616, he drew several scenes of Haarlem as a series of 26 landscape prints. The success of this venture led him to expand it thirty years later to 60 prints, most of which are in the possession of the North Holland Archives. In the archives are also a few prints from a series of 12 local landscapes by Esaias, which indicates that they may have collaborated on this project.