Antonie Waterloo

Antonie Waterloo (6 May 1609 – 23 October 1690) was a Dutch Golden Age landscape painter.

Biography

Waterloo is thought to have been born at Ryssel (Lille), then in the Spanish Netherlands, now part of northern France. His mother was Magdalena Vaillant who became a member of the Walloon Church, Amsterdam in 1621, followed by his own membership in 1630. Little is known of his early life and, as

no records of any formal training as an artist have been discovered, he may well have been self taught. Although registered as a painter, he had little success in selling his own canvases and, apparently, supported himself through his activities as an art dealer in addition to sales of his drawings and prints.

In 1640 he married in Amsterdam, and in 1653 he left the church and moved to Leeuwarden, but in 1654 he buried a daughter in Amsterdam before moving to Maarssen in 1655 where he lived until 1676. According to Houbraken he was good friends with Jan Weenix who told Houbraken that he knew him for 45 years and often visited him in his house between Maarssen and Breukelen where he lived as a bachelor, to decorate his landscape paintings with animals and other objects. Houbraken found his landscapes very natural, and liked his manner of painting reflections in water.

Waterloo was among the first artists to have established a reputation almost entirely based upon his work as a draftsman. Oil paintings by Waterloo are relatively scarce, but his many drawings of forest scenes and other topographical views are found in collections in Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, Vienna, Amsterdam, and London.