He was born in Antwerp in 1582 or 1584 as the son of Adriaen van Nieulandt the elder (died 1603) and Geertruyd Loyson (died ca. 1627). His family included a number of artists such as his uncle Guilliam or Willem van Nieulandt (I) who was a painter and draftsperson. His younger brother
Adriaen van Nieulandt the younger (born in 1586 in Antwerp) became a decorative painter of interiors, print artist, art dealer, appraiser, painter and draftsperson and was mainly active in Amsterdam. The van Nielandt family moved to Amsterdam in 1589, after the
Fall of Antwerp, possibly because they were Protestants or simply for economic reasons as Antwerp was suffering the effects of the ongoing war with Holland. Father van Nieulandt became a
poorter of Amsterdam in 1594, which shows that he was of good means. Contemporary art historians have argued that he was not the pupil of Roelant Savery, but of his brother
Jacob Savery, an artist specialised in
still lifes, animals, landscapes en
genre paintings. On 13 April 1606 he became a citizen of Antwerp. His son Adriaen was born in 1607. The violence of the
Eighty Years' War had caused the decline of Antwerp's
chambers of rhetoric (rederijkerskamers) which staged theatre plays in the city. The
Twelve Years' Truce, which established a temporary reprieve from the Eighty Years' War from 1609 to 1621, allowed for their revival. It is likely that the Antwerp chamber of rhetoric
Olyftack (Olive Branch) commissioned Willem van Nieulandt to assist with the restoration of their meeting room and performance area. It paid him for a painting of the Virgin Mary and the renewal of its blazon. By the winter of 1615, he had finished his restoration work. On 25 September of the same year, together with Joan David Heemsen, he took the oath as an elder (hoofdman) of the resurrected chamber of rhetoric, and in November the performances of two of his tragedies,
Livia, already completed in March 1614, and
Saul, written shortly afterwards, began. He was very successful with these plays which helped revive the Antwerp theatre scene. On 22 May 1629 he witnessed in Antwerp the baptism of the first child of his daughter Constantia. At some unknown time after this date he returned to Amsterdam where he published his final tragedy in 1635, which he had written in the two years before he left Antwerp. He executed a will on 24 October 1635 while he was sick in bed in his home in Amsterdam. He signed the will with ' Giu. v. Nieulandt'. Shortly thereafter he died. ==Artworks==