Van de Velde essentially invented realistic Dutch landscape painting as a standalone genre. He stripped away the crowded figures and bright colours of sixteenth-century tradition and replaced them with a unified atmosphere: low viewpoints, naturalistic skies, muted tones. His pupil Jan van Goyen would perfect the approach.

He was born in Amsterdam in 1587 to a Flemish Protestant father who had fled Antwerp. He joined the Haarlem Guild of Saint Luke in 1612 and served as Court Painter to Prince Maurits and Frederick Henry in The Hague. He died in 1630, at forty-three.