Willem Van Der Does

Willem Jan Pieter van der Does (20 April 1889 – 3 February 1966) was a Dutch painter, art illustrator, draftsman, and water-colorist associated with the East Indies impressionist movement. Biography Willem van der Does was born on 20 April 1889 in Rotterdam, Netherlands. He was the son of an expat (probably a sea commander) working in the Dutch East Indies. Since his childhood, he had always been taught to become an artist by his family, in his youthful years he studied in de Rotterdam Academie van Kunst (now the Willem de Kooning Academy) and then continued his study privately. He came to the Dutch East Indies around the year c.1918, and growing up there until he became a civil servant to survey the country. In this function he traveled all over the archipelago such as Surabaya, Batavia, Medan, Malang and Bandung. He participated in several group and solo exhibition in the Netherlands and Indonesia. He was also the first ever known Dutchmen to have traveled to Antarctica. During his travel to Antarctica in 1923–1924, he made around 144 sketches for his book Storm, Ijs, en Walvisschen which describes his expedition and journey in exploring Antarctica. In 1936 van der Does participated in the 1936 Olympics event in Berlin. In this event he submitted a painting that he had created in the Dutch Indies titled "Towards the Unknown" (the subject are two explorers struggling against an Antarctic storm), the painting was exhibited in the Kaiserdamm hall, along with other submitted paintings. He received a bronze participation medal from the Olympics Committee.