Jan Walravenartist • painterAmsterdam 1827-na 1878

Jan Walraven was born in Amsterdam in 1827 and lived and worked there until 1863. He subsequently moved to Brussels. He established a reputation mainly as a history painter and painter of figure scenes with children. During the Romantic period, people liked to see children portrayed as the personification of virtues such as simplicity, sincerity and naturalness. The paintings were an especially popular genre amongst bourgeois buyers. Walraven preferred to paint farmer children with glossy curls and red cheeks, absorbed in simple tasks and accompanied by the small animals living on the farmstead.