Willem van Royen, a still life and flower painter who moved to Berlin in 1669,  had become court painter to Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg, after van Royen's predecessor, the flower painter Adriaen van der Spelt returned to the Netherlands.

After a period in Potsdam in 1689, he had become one of the founders of the Berlin academy in 1695, where he will die in 1723.

He was probably born in Haarlem and during the years 1661-1668 became a pupil of Arnold van Ravesteyn there or in The Hague, according to the Netherlands Institute for Art History.