He was a leading member of the group of landscape painters referred to as the Hague School and was, during his lifetime, "the most respected Dutch artist of the second half of the nineteenth century.

From September 1845 until May 1847 he was in Paris, working in the history painter François-Édouard Picot's studio and taking classes at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts under James Pradier, Horace Vernet, and Paul Delaroche.

[5] Among his more important subsequent works are The Zandvoort Fisherman (in the Amsterdam Gallery), The Silent House (which gained a gold medal at the Brussels Salon, 1858), and Village Poor (a prize at Manchester).

[6] His later works include The Widower (in the Mesdag collection), When we grow Old, Peasant Family at the Table[7] and Alone in the World (Van Gogh Museum / Amsterdam Gallery), An Interior (Dordrecht Gallery), A Frugal Meal (Glasgow Museum), Toilers of the Sea, Speechless Dialogue, Between the Fields and the Seashore, The Bric-a-brac Seller (which gained medals of honor at the Paris Exhibition of 1900).

They are generally treated in broad masses of light and shade, which give prominence to the principal subject without any neglect of detail.