The deaf-mute painter Gerrit Zegelaar was born on 16th July 1719 in Loenen aan de Vecht (Netherlands). He married Maria van den Steen in 1757 and is documented as having lived in Amsterdam in 1773. On 24th June 1794 he died in Wageningen. Zegelaar imitated the style of the genre painter Gerrit Dou from Leiden. In addition to easel paintings, he also created drawings and murals. For Matthijs Hoofman's house in Haarlem he executed murals of the Four Elements and the Four Seasons in 1763. They had been preserved in the Leipzig Museum of Applied Arts before being lost during the Second World War.
