John Matthew Graadt of Rays was a Dutch painter and graphic artist, who is also called Job Graadt van Roggen. His work included plein-aire landscape painting, marine scenes, portraits and cityscapes, many of them done in Bergen and surrounding countryside. In style, he is considered a forerunner of the Bergen School, an expressionist, cubist influenced group of Dutch artists active between 1915 and 1925 .

Graadt van Roggen was deaf from the age of three due to meningitis, and during his entire youth was enrolled at the Deaf and Dumb Institute (as it was then called ) in Groningen. He made his first paintings as a seventeen year old.

In 1900 Graadt van Roggen went to Bergen, North Holland to live where he had a house bu...