The brothers Caesar van Everdingen and Allart van Everdingen were the sons of Pieter van Everdingen, a notary and solicitor in Alkmaar; their mother, Aechte Claesdr., was a midwife in the city. The van Everdingen family had long-standing ties with Utrecht, and Allart also eventually trained with a painter from Utrecht. Caesar is best known as a history painter who worked in the classicizing style that became fashionable in Haarlem in the mid-17th century, while Allart made his name as a landscape artist, the first to depict Scandinavian motifs in his paintings and drawings.