Petrus Van der Velden 
Born in Rotterdam, Petrus van der Velden was the fifth child born into a working class Catholic family: a childhood spent in poor surroundings and depressed conditions. In 1868, one year after embarking on a career as a painter, one of van der Velden's stone lithographs featured in the art journal Kunstkronijk. van der Velden was considered exclusively a painter of genre, peasants and fishermen by many of the early writers on Dutch painting between 1850 and the early 1900's and even Vincent van Gogh, in a letter to his brother Theo in 1883, wrote of Van der Velden as a genre painter. In 1870 he was awarded a King's pension, enabling him to work independently and there are suggestions that upon awarding the pension, the committee recommended that van der Velden use the money to "go and study in Marken". It is his drawings, watercolours and paintings from Marken which form a fascinating record of life on the island in the late nineteenth century. Van der Velden's work was exhibited widely in the Netherlands: at the Arti in Amsterdam, the Academy Building in The Hague and the Rijksmuseum among many others; and in 1874 van der Velden was accepted as a member of the Schilderkundig Genootschap Pulchri Studio in The Hague, considered the principal artistic center in the Netherlands in the 1870's. Anyone wishing to move in The Hague's art circles sought membership to the Pulchri Studio. Van der Velden settled in Christchurch in 1889 with twenty-three years of painting experience behind him and a further twenty-three years ahead. During January of 1891 he made a six-week trip to the Otira region, visiting Greymouth, Kumara and the West Coast, and this trip gave rise to an extensive, and subsequently best known series of paintings featuring the stormy West Coast skies over the Otira Pass area. A key figure in introducing romantic naturalism to landscape painting in this country, van der Velden also painted in the genre tradition, painting scenes from every-day life. This genre tradition, popular in the Netherlands, continued to occupy the artist from the time of his arrival in New Zealand until the 1890s. Many of these works depict men and women engaged in musical activities.
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