Brief Biography-Jan Ekels, the Younger of Amsterdam, was a genre and portrait painter trained initially by his father, Jan. the Amsterdam Academy for seven years. During that time, he copied paintings by artists like Jan Miense Molenaer. He spent two years in Paris and toured the Rhineland in Germany, where he extended his experience of the old masters. His main influences were artists such as Pieter de Hooch, Gabriel Metsu and Johannes Vermeer. He won a medal and the Great Painter Book by Gerard de Lairesse for winning first prize at the Amsterdam Drawing Academy in 1781. His inheritance allowed him to paint at his leisure when his parents died. In 1783, he gained admittance to the Felix Meritis Foundation in Amsterdam, established in 1776. He died at the early age of thirty-three in 1793 after having a stroke.