Piet van der Hem

Piet van der Hem studied at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Amsterdam. He lived in the Netherlands, France, Italy, Russia, Spain and after 1946 permanently in Den Haag. He painted dancing halls, music halls and Spanish dance-houses in the style of Toulouse-Lautrec. Van der Hem also produced portraits of the Dutch Royal Family. He was also a political cartoonist and designer of advertisements and book covers. In addition to oil paintings, he produced numerous watercolors and pastels, etchings, and color lithographs. His style was in the tradition of impressionism and symbolism.

During his stay in Spain in the mid-1910s, he created numerous oil paintings with bullfight scenes. The Skier could not be identified, although it was highly praised in the contemporary newspaper Sport in Beeld.