Early Life, Family and Training Born in Leiden, Netherlands, around 1611, Willem van de Velde the Elder was a child of the sea. His father, Willem Willemsz. van de Velde, was a Flemish skipper, and this maritime lineage ensured that the boy’s earliest understandings were shaped by the salt and wind of the Dutch Republic. Rather than receiving a formal education within the walls of an academy, his training was rooted in the direct obse…