Willem van der Does

The son of a sea captain, Willem van der Does studied art privately and at the Art Academy in Rotterdam. He worked as an illustrator, but also made paintings, water colors and drawings. Between 1918 and 1946 he lived in the Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia), where he worked as a public officer. He mainly painted Indonesian landscapes, villages, and sea and harbor scenes. His illustrations appeared in numerous books and other media.

Willem van der Does served in 1923-24 as a bosun on a Norwegian whaler that visited the Antarctic seas. He described and illustrated his experiences in the book Storms, Ice and Whales. After World War II, Van der Does re-settled in the Netherlands, where he continued to paint, first in Schiedam and later Zeist. His 1936 entry Het onbekende tegemoet (Towards the Unknown), showing two explorers fighting an Antarctic storm, was probably one of the works created during or in the aftermath of his voyage to the Antarctic.