Background
Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom was born in 1562 in Haarlem, Noord-Holland, Netherlands, part of a family of artists. His father was Cornelis Hendricksz Vroom the Elder, sculptor and ceramic artist.
Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom was born in 1562 in Haarlem, Noord-Holland, Netherlands, part of a family of artists. His father was Cornelis Hendricksz Vroom the Elder, sculptor and ceramic artist.
In Florence, Hendrick became a pupil of Paulus Bril.
Though it is unknown at what age Hendrick started on his travels, Vroom began his career as a pottery or faience painter and when his mother remarried, was no older than 19 when he rebelled against his stepfather who insisted he stick to pottery painting, by boarding a ship for Spain and from thence via Livorno and Florence to Rome. In Florence, Hendrick was patronized around 1585 – 1587 by Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici, and later Grand Duke of Tuscany. While there he became a pupil of Paulus Bril. He went back and forth to Venice, where he earned money as a majolica painter.
When Hendrick returned north, he traveled via Milan, Genoa, Albisola, a ceramics center where he again earned money painting ceramics, Turin, where he met the Haarlem painter Jan Kraeck, and Lyon, via a mountain pass where his pants froze to the summit rock. From there he traveled to Paris, where he met a painter from Leiden, and from there he went to Rouen, where he became mortally ill but was saved by a woman who bandaged his head. There he boarded a ship homewards and was back in Haarlem in 1590, the year he married, before traveling to Danzig to visit his uncle, Frederick Henricksz, who was city architect there, and where he painted an altarpiece.
During his next journey, that time to Portugal, he survived shipwreck, but was threatened with execution as "an English pirate" - from which he was saved by being recognized as a Catholic from his salvaged devotional paintings, which convinced the monks on the beach that he and his companions were not "heathen Protestants." Having been granted free passage, Vroom traveled to Saint Huves, where he recorded his adventures in a painting that he sold to a painter there.
When Hendrick decided to return to Haarlem, he got off the ship at the last minute due to a premonition, being called a "crazy painter." The ship sank in the Øresund near Helsingor and in Haarlem Vroom was reported dead. However, he had written to his wife, who thus discovered he was still alive.
When he did return to Haarlem, it was as an artist of international repute and soon afterwards he received two commissions for tapestry designs, one of which, from Lord Howard of Effingham, was for a series of ten tapestries depicting the defeat of the Spanish Armada of 1588, by the English under Howard’s overall command as Lord Admiral. Executed in Brussels in 1592 – 1595, the tapestries later decorated the House of Lords in Westminster and were fortunately recorded in engravings before they were destroyed by fire in 1834. The artist died in Haarlem, in his late seventies.
Arrival of a Dutch Three-master at Schloss Kronberg
The Departure of the East Indiamen
The Return of Prince Charles from Spain, 5 October 1623
View of Delft from the Southwest
Attack on Spanish Treasure Galleys, Portugal
A Castle with a Ship Sailing Nearby
The Battle with the Spanish Armada
unknown title
Dutch Ships Ramming Spanish Galleys off the Flemish Coast in October 1602
The Arrival at Vlissingen of Frederick V, Elector Palatine
View of Hoorn (Netherlands)
A Dutch Ship and a Kaag in a Fresh Breeze
Ships Trading in the East
The explosion of the Spanish flagship during the Battle of Gibraltar, 25 April 1607 (attributed by some to Vroom)
Ferry Boat on a River, Trees on a Hill to the Left
The Harbour in Amsterdam
Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom adhered to the artistic traditions of Baroque.
Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom was a member of the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke.
Hendrick's three sons, Cornelis Vroom the Younger, Frederick Vroom II and Jacob Vroom I - all became painters, as did his grandson Jacob Vroom II, the son of Cornelis Vroom.