The Belgian painter Raoul Hynckes had a traditional training at the Academy of Art in Brussels. In 1914, due to wartime circumstances, he exchanged his home town of Brussels for Amsterdam. Here, he often travelled to Volendam and Schellingwoude where he painted deft, compelling sketches of boats on the water and the local harbours. After 1924 he really only painted symbolically charged, highly detailed still lifes, considered as belonging to the Magical Realism movement.