Jan Vermeer van Haarlem the Elder

Jan Vermeer van Haarlem is no relation of the Delft painter of The Milkmaid. The words "van Haarlem" were added to tell the families apart, and this Vermeer was born in Haarlem in 1628 and died there in 1691, after a career spent painting the country around it.

He trained with the Haarlem painter Jacob de Wet and then turned to the dunes at Overveen, just outside the city, seen from a high viewpoint in the manner of Jacob van Ruisdael, the leading Haarlem landscapist. The Mauritshuis owns his Landscape on the Edge of the Dunes. In later years his views open out into the broad panoramas associated with Philips Koninck, the Amsterdam painter of wide, flat country.