Sailboats at Low Tide

De Zwart was intended to follow in his father’s footsteps and work as a carriage painter, but he pursued a different creative path. After studying at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, he spent three years in the studio of Jacob Maris, who encouraged him to work with no preliminary drawings, directly onto the canvas. As a result, De Zwart became a rigorous, uninhibited painter whose broad brushstrokes and vibrant colors produced sometimes-radical images that looked forward to the early works of Van Gogh and Piet Mondrian.