Jan Goedhart was born in the former Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia); his father was a retired naval office and his mother died shortly after he was born. At the age of six, Goedhart went to live with relatives in the Netherlands. His talent for drawing was recognised early on and he received private lessons from Professor Carel Dake (1857-1918), a Dutch painter and teacher at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten (Royal Academy of Graphic Arts) in Amsterdam which Goedhart joined in 1911.

Goedhart aspired to be a marine painter, but Dake advised him he would make a greater living as a portrait painter which he did throughout the 1920s whilst living in The Hague. During these years his artistic reputation grew.Towards the end of the Second World War, Goedhart turned to depicting seascapes, working mainly from observation and finishing works on location. He regularly travelled with the Dutch Navy, making his first voyage on a naval vessel in 1951. The works he produced from this voyage were so popular that the Navy eventually founded the Nederlandse Vereniging van Zeeschilders (Dutch Society of Marine Painters) of which Goedhart was one of the  first members.

In 1958 he painted this work of the HMY Britannia arriving for the state visit of Queen Elizabeth II to The Netherlands. Goedhart was one of several artists to be invited on board the Dutch Navy ships to witness the arrival of the Royal Yacht.

HMY Britannia can be seen on the right, escorted by a Dutch Squadron on the left with other ships in the distance. It was reported that the weather that day was overcast and Goedhart’s almost monochrome palette has perfectly captured the grey skies and breaks in the cloud to convey the cloudy weather that day. He worked in a realistic-impressionist style with an eye for detail, particularly when depicting the ships. 

His work was selected by a jury to be presented to The Queen on behalf of the Dutch Navy in the summer of 1960 and Goedhart attended the presentation.