Biography

Netherlandish painter. Only one documentary reference to him is known (it refers to the burial of his daughter in 1467) but recently it turned out to be a misreading. Otherwise knowledge depends on what van Mander wrote about him c. 1604. He said Ouwater was the founder of the Haarlem school and the master of Geertgen tot Sint Jans. He also praised his skill as a landscapist, so it is ironic that the only painting that can be identified as Ouwater's from van Mander's description of his work is an interior scene - the Raising of Lazarus (Staatliche Museen, Berlin). The thoughtful, unemotional style has some affinities with the work of Dieric Bouts the Elder who was a native of Haarlem. He may have designed for the new craft of woodcut book-illustration. A fragmentary Head of a Donor (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) and two wings in Granada are attributed to him.