According to Houbraken he was a friend of the painter Johan Starrenberg.[1] Unable to gain favor with buyers, he became depressed when he saw the works of lesser painters selling for higher prices than his own work.[1] He planted a bayonet pointed upwards in the corner of his room, and fell backwards upon it, and this suicide spurred the poet Lud. Smids to make two poems in his memory.[1]
According to the RKD he is possibly the same person as J. de Wolf, a draughtsman specialized in genre pieces and farm scenes, who followed Gerrit Adriaensz De Heer.[2]
