Peter van Dongen (born 21 October 1966; Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
Peter van Dongen is a Dutch illustrator, commercial artist and graphic novelist from Amsterdam. He is known for his use of the "Clear Line" drawing style in the tradition of Hergé and E.P. Jacobs. Despite being active since the 1980s, the meticulous Van Dongen has a small but widely praised oeuvre. His masterpiece is the graphic novel series 'Rampokan', in which he explores the history of the Dutch Indies, the land of Van Dongen's ancestors.

Born in Amsterdam in 1966, Van Dongen graduated as an advertising artist from the Amsterdam Graphic School. He published his first comic strips in amateur and alternative magazines like Rebel Comix and De Balloen in the early 1980s. In 1986-1987, he made the promotional strip 'Prince en Buster', which appeared on the back-pages of Wordt Vervolgd magazine and was meant to attract subscribers. In 1990 he published his debut graphic novel 'Muizentheater', a gripping tale of two working class lads growing up in Amsterdam during the Depression years. A nice feature of 'Muizentheater' is that it is one of the very few books about Amsterdam that does not feature any canals - van Dongen hates clichés. 'Muizentheater' earned Van Dongen the Dutch Stripschapprijs for the Best Comic Book of the Year in 1991.

Van Dongen continued to work as a commercial illustrator in the 1990s and it took almost a decade before he published a new book. This was 'Rampokan-Java' (1998), a tale about the independence struggle in the former Dutch colony of Indonesia, and it was even better received than his debut. For the plot, he relied heavily on the lives of his mother and grandmother. The story was told in a stunning Clear Line style with sepia coloring - the echo of Hergé's colonial classic 'Tintin in Africa' was constantly there in the background. 'Rampokan' was co-designed by Joost Swarte and earned both author and publisher the 1999 Dutch Prize for Best Book Design. In 2004, the second part, 'Rampokan-Celebes', appeared. In 2005, he organized a series of expositions with artwork by Indonesian artists like Tita and Anto Motulz, held on several locations in Java.

In 1991 Van Dongen won the Dutch Stripschapprijs for 'Best Comic Book of the Year', with 'Muizentheater'. On 19 January 2018 Peter van Dongen won the Dutch Stripschap Prize 2018, the annual oeuvre award for Dutch comics artists.