Buytewech, Willem

Born 1591 or 1592 in Rotterdam; died there on Sept. 23, 1624. Dutch painter, graphic artist, and etcher. One of the creators of Dutch genre art and national landscape painting. His genre paintings (in the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest and the Boymans-van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam) show an original combination of vivid and lifelike characterization of types with allegorical and theatrical elements. His landscape etchings and his drawings of scenes of domestic and street life are striking in the bold realism of their new approach; in them he achieves a rare acuity of observation, as well as artistic freedom and an expressive style.