When I walked into the Grand View Hotel in Wentworth Falls in the NSW Blue Mountains to have drink on a Saturday evening, I noticed a painting of recently nicely restored hotel painted by James Willebrant. Having the DACC in mind I wanted to see if there was a Dutch connection with a name like Willebrant.
En of course there is, James Willebrant is an Australian artist whose life and career reflect the international movements that shaped many post-war cultural figures. Born in Shanghai in 1950, Willebrant spent his early childhood in Europe before his family migrated to Australia in the late 1950s. While I couldn’t find direct evidence it is highly likely that the family does have at least some Dutch heritance.
Documented biographical records indicate that Willebrant lived in the Netherlands between 1951 and 1958, a formative period that included time in Noordwijk aan Zee, a coastal town west of Leiden. Photographic material from the mid-1950s confirms his presence there as a young child. This places Willebrant within the broader post-war context of families moving between Asia, Europe and Australia in the aftermath of the Second World War and the decolonisation of Asia.
While no publicly available sources confirm Dutch ancestry in a genealogical sense, this period of residence establishes a clear and verifiable Netherlands connection through lived experience. For many families in the early 1950s, the Netherlands functioned as a temporary home during a time of global upheaval, reconstruction and migration, before permanent resettlement elsewhere.
Willebrant migrated to Australia in 1958 and later studied at the National Art School in Sydney, where he was awarded a Diploma of Painting. He went on to develop a long and successful artistic career, exhibiting widely in Australia and internationally and being represented in numerous public, corporate and institutional collections.
Seen through the lens of Dutch-Australian heritage, James Willebrant’s early years in the Netherlands form part of a shared historical narrative of post-war movement, cultural exchange and resettlement. His life story illustrates how Dutch places and experiences, even when brief, became interwoven with Australian cultural and artistic life in the decades following the war.
Paul Budde – January 2026
