Jacob van der Ulft
1621–1689 · Dutch Republic · Baroque
The story
For almost 20 years Jacob van der Ulft was one of the men who ran the town he was born in. Baptised in March 1621 in Gorinchem, a fortified river town in Holland, he followed his father twice over, first as a glass painter and then as one of the town's burgomasters, an office he held on and off between 1660 and 1679. The biographer Arnold Houbraken, writing a generation later, called him the best glass painter of his century.
He also worked in oil and ink, mostly town views and architecture, Dutch and Italian alike, busy with small figures, and he made etchings. His time in office ended badly. In 1679, accused of mismanaging the town's money, he left Gorinchem for The Hague, and in 1683 he settled in Noordwijk, a village on the coast near Leiden, where he died in 1689.
