Cornelis van Rootselaar

Cornelis van Rootselaar was educated by the Franciscan fathers, which influenced his paintings later in life. 

After primary school he learned the trade of a house painter and was apprenticed to Willem Gestel in The Hague. He became friends with his son Leo, later a well-known painter. In 1903 he became a painter's assistant to the widow Dieuwertje Beemster-Huisman (Huesmann) from Wervershoof. He married her two years later and would live in Wervershoof all his life. Cornelis van Rootselaar has become known as a leisure painter. In his work he was strongly inspired by the Bible, but in addition to religious images, he painted landscapes, village scenes, craft scenes, special events, houses, animals, portraits and self-portraits and he captured characteristic West Frisian scenes for posterity.