Willem van den Berg was born on 16 February 1886 in The Hague. He received his earliest artistic training from his father, Andries van den Berg, a painter, printmaker and art teacher, before enrolling at the local Academie voor Beeldende Kunst. In 1913 he befriended the artist Willem van Konijnenburg (1868-1943), took study trips to Belgium, Italy, England, and worked with Barbizon artists in France, where he exhibited at the Jeu de Paume in Paris in 1926. In 1935 his work was shown at the Art Institute of Chicago and he continued to exhibit internationally throughout his career. By 1938 he had settled in Amsterdam, where he served as director of the Rijksakademie until his death on 23 December 1970.

Throughout his long and successful career, Van den Berg remained committed to the realist tradition, specializing in portraits, animals, landscapes, and scenes with farmers and fishermen. Scheveningen on the North Sea was his Brittany: a fishing community frozen in time, untouched by modernity. Its villages and their industrious inhabitants offered ideal inspiration. Anchored in the past by a refusal to don modern dress, the weathered fisherfolk embodied a way of life that was rapidly disappearing in the 1930s. Their rugged faces and hands attest to the harsh realities of their existence, while the medieval costume protects the protagonist against life’s adversities. Most often rendered in monochrome, the present drawing’s colorful rendition offers a rare representation of the traditional garments worn by Scheveningen women for centuries.