Mathilde van der Does de Willebois was born in Utrecht in 1970. At the end of 1989 she moved to Florence on a three-month scholarship from the Italian Cultural Institute in Amsterdam to study Italian and was introduced to the Cecil-Graves studios where she studied from 1990 to 1992. In her second year there a Dutch businessman Mr. Piet Langedijk sponsored Mathilde. At the end of that year, 1991, the Cecil Graves studio split up, and Mathilde and six other students followed Daniel Graves to set up his new studio, which would become The Florence Academy of Art, and completed her last year with this academy. In 1993 Mathilde moved to North Carolina, USA, to study with the oil and fresco painter Jeffrey Mims. On returning to Europe, she moved to Amsterdam where she mainly painted still lives and interiors, inspired the Great Dutch Masters. In 1995 she moved back to Italy where she currently lives in the Tuscan countryside with her husband Alexander and their two children. Mathilde mainly paints landscapes, using her direct surroundings as a subject, and still lives.