Willem Dooijewaard was born in 1892 in Amsterdam, he was schooled at the Rijksschool voor Kunstnijverheid in Amsterdam by Roland Strasser and Georg Sturm. Dooijewaard was an adventurous men, when he was twenty years old he left as one the first Dutch painters to Dutch East Indies. He travelled a lot more throughout Asia and even climbed the Himalaya.

During his travels he tried to capture locals doing their everyday job in an impressionistic way. Dooijewaard never used models, he was very good in making contact with locals without interfering with what they where doing. After his journey in Asia came to an end he travelled to the South of France. Here he was invited to paint the ballet dancers of the theatre in Nice.

In 1933 he moved back to the Netherlands and lived in Blaricum together with his wife Jacoba until he died in 1980.