Rudolf Possin was among the many foreign artists who painted Dutch fisherman life and the North Sea coast in the decades around 1900. He was born in Magdeburg and was trained as a painter at the Weimar 'Kunstschule'. His teacher in genre painting there was Max Thedy, who from 1870 made a name for himself with interiors of Dutch fishermen's and peasant houses. This Dutch fishing genre was particularly popular among the painters who were trained in Düsseldorf, Munich, Karlsruhe and Weimar. In the footsteps of his teacher, Possin traveled annually to Holland between 1895 and 1914, especially to the old fishing villages of Volendam and Marken. In Volendam he usually took up residence in Hotel Spaander.