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Pieter J.L. van Veen (1875-1961), was a Post-Impressionist painter who studied at the Royal Academy of Arts, in The Hague. He was strongly influenced by the Impressionists and knew both Renoir and Van Gogh very well when he lived and painted in France and was also acquainted with Monet and Cezanne. His cathedral paintings have a very similar likeness to Monet's.
In mid-career, he visited the United States for the first time and painted plien-air landscapes throughout the country from the Connecticut hills to the Cascades where he was invited by Railroad magnate Sam Hill. Hill commissioned him to paint a variety of landscapes of the Northwest and Northern California for his personal collection.
In the 1930's, he advised Charles and Emma Frye on purchases for their collection which included several of his own works. He traveled throughout the Pacific Northwest in 1934 and completed a series of paintings of the Cascade Mountains and eventually settled late in his life in Tacoma, Washington until his death in 1961.
His mature works concentrated on three subjects: cathedrals, landscapes, and flowers. His paintings of French Gothic cathedrals, 27 canvases in all, earned him the French Legion of Honor in 1929, the same year this painting is dated which makes it particularly collectable.
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