Amsterdam City View with Houses on the Herengracht and the old Haarlemmersluis

Jan van der Heyden made his name as the painter who essentially invented the modern cityscape, turning Amsterdam’s canals and brick facades into a genre in their own right. This view of the Herengracht and the old Haarlemmersluis belongs to his mature years, when he was also a celebrated inventor whose fire engine won him a municipal appointment in Amsterdam. The same patient precision that made his street views so coveted went into the engineering drawings that financed them; collectors prized his clean, sunlit architecture at a time when most Dutch painters had moved indoors.