Johannes Evert Hendrik Akkeringa was part of the second generation of the Hague School* painters. He is primarily known for his paintings and watercolours of women and playing children at the beach, women mending nets and intimate tea-time conversations.

Akkeringa was born in Blinjoe in the Dutch East Indies. He was the second child of Johannes Evert Akkeringa (1829-1863), an engineer in the tin mines of the Billiton-Company at Bangka, and later at Buitenzorg. His mother, Sariedje (born in 1842), was of mixed Chinese and Javanese ethnic origin. Following the death of his father in 1864 from typhus, Akkeringa moved with his brother and sister to The Hague, where they grew up in the household of his aunt.

In the spring of 1878, ...