Joost Cornelisz Droochsloot ( Utrecht 1586 - Utrecht 1666 )

Joost Cornelisz Droochsloot was a Dutch painter of genre pictures, village scenes, moral allegories and biblical stories. He was active in Utrecht from 1616 to 1660 and admitted to the Artists' Guild of St Luke in 1616 at the age of 40. He was the Guild's dean from 1623 to 1624.

His early works reflects the influence of Esaias van de Velde, Pieter Brueghel the Elder and Pieter Brueghel the Younger and the Flemish David Vinckboons.

He continued the tradition of Flemish landscape painting. He usually shows a broad village street leading into the distance, with houses on both sides. Village activity is depicted with numerous, rather coarse peasant figures, and a moral note is often struck : people nursing the sick or feeding the poor. He generally uses trees with and without leaves in a schematic pattern. His figures are dispersed somewhat at random, the coloration is as a rule reddish-brown.

He was the teacher of his son, Cornelis Droochsloot (1630-1673), and Jacob Duck (1600-1660).