A Milkman with his Milkcans

Weissenbruch came from a family of artists and began taking lessons from the artist Bartholomeus van Hove as a boy. There he met the artist Bernard Blommers, who would also emerge as a leading figure in The Hague School; both pupils contributed to the decoration of scenery for the Royal Theater in The Hague. Early on, Weissenbruch, very much under the influence of seventeenth-century painter Jacob van Ruisdael, painted in a precise, detailed style, but as he matured his palette grew more restrained and his brushwork, looser. He was a founder of the Pulchri Art Studio and found local fame early in his career (the Teylers Museum, Haarlem, acquired one of his early panoramic paintings) but his was not widespread celebrity. In 1900 he travelled to Barbizon and thereafter, developed an even more rigorous brushstroke and muted palette.