Adriaen Van Diest (1655-1704)

Adriaen van Diest was born in the Hague in the Netherlands. Like his father and his brother, he pursued a career as a marine painter, that is, a painter of seascapes and sailing ships. In 1673, attracted by the thriving English market for portraits and marine paintings, he joined the exodus of Dutch artists leaving to work in England. It is thought that his master was Willem van de Velde the Younger, the great Dutch marine artist who had a busy studio at Greenwich, just outside London on the River Thames. A gifted and versatile artist, Van Diest also painted landscapes, and his views of western England were to influence the landscape painter Richard Wilson.