The life of this extraordinary artist, if we are to believe his
biographers, is soon told. He was born at Leyden in 1636. He early
exhibited a passion for art, which his father, a wealthy brewer of that
city, endeavored to restrain, and afterwards apprehending that he could
not procure a comfortable subsistence by the exercise of his pencil,
established him in his own business at Delft, where, instead of
attending to his affairs, he gave himself up to dissipation, and soon
squandered his means and ruined his establishment; his indulgent parent,
after repeated attempts to reclaim him, was compelled to abandon him to
his fate. He opened a tavern, which proved more calamitous than the
former undertaking. He gave himself up entirely to reveling and
intoxication, wrought only when his necessities compelled him, and sold
his pictures to satisfy his immediate wants, and often for the most
paltry prices to escape arrest.