Like many Dutch painters of his time, he studied art in the town of Haarlem with Esaias van de Velde.

He died in 1656 in The Hague, still unbelievably 18,000 guilders in debt, forcing his widow to sell their remaining furniture and paintings.

Van Goyen's troubles also may have affected the early business prospects of his student and son-in-law Jan Steen, who left The Hague in 1654.

Jan van Goyen would be classified primarily as a landscape artist with an eye for the genre subjects of everyday life.

With a blade, he would then scrape over the entire surface a thin layer of tinted white lead to act as a ground and to fill the low areas of the panel.

Next, van Goyen would loosely and very rapidly sketch out the scene to be painted with pen and ink without going into the small details of his subject.

On his palette he would grind out a colour collection of neutral grays, umbers, ochre and earthen greens that looked like they were pulled from the very soil he painted.

The lighter areas of the picture were treated heavier and opaque with a generous amount of white lead mixed into the paint.

According to the art historian H. U. Beck, "In his freely composed seascapes of the 1650s he reached the apex of his creative work, producing paintings of striking perfection.