P.T. van Wijngaerdt was the younger brother of the romantic landscape painter A.J. van Wijngaerdt. He was born in Rotterdam, lived for some time in The Hague and London and finally settled in Haarlem. Together with his contemporaries Reijntjens, Bles, Scholten and Bakker Korff, he belonged to the group of genre painters who mainly chose elegant figures as a subject. The Frans Halsmuseum in Haarlem has work by this painter in the collection.