Background
De Witte was born in Alkmaar and learned geometry from his father, a schoolmaster.
De Witte was born in Alkmaar and learned geometry from his father, a schoolmaster.
After a stay in Rotterdam, he moved to Delft and studied with Evert van Aelst.
In contrast to Pieter Jansz Saenredam, who emphasized architectural accuracy, De Witte was more concerned with the atmosphere of his interiors. Though few in number, de Witte also produced genre paintings. He joined the local Guild of Street Luke in 1636.
In December 1659 both were arrested for theft from a neighbor.
Lysbeth, pregnant, had to leave the city for a period of six years. She lived outside the city walls and died in 1663.
De Witte broke the contract, was sued by the dealer, and forced to indenture himself further as a result. Several patrons provided de Witte with support, but these relations did not work out well, for he tended to shout at his clients and at people watching him at work in churches.
Records tell of his gambling habit and a fight with Gerard de Lairesse.
Around 1688 he moved in with Hendrick van Streeck, in exchange for training him as a painter of church interiors. According to Arnold Houbraken, after an argument about the rent, de Witte hanged himself from a canal bridge in 1692. The rope broke and de Witte drowned.
Because the canal froze that night, his corpse was not found until eleven weeks later.
De Witte initially painted portraits as well as mythological and religious scenes. After his move from Delft to Amsterdam in 1651 de Witte specialized more and more in representing church interiors, and he painted the old church in Amsterdam from almost every corner.
He sometimes combined aspects of different churches to depict interiors of ideal churches, populating them with churchgoers, sometimes accompanied by a dog. De Witte"s excellent sense of composition combined with his use of light created atmospheres which seem honest and realium
His theme may have been light and how it creates livable space.
Alkmaar Guild of Saint Luke.