Isaac Ouwater

In 1779 a crowd of men pushes toward one door on the Kalverstraat, Amsterdam's busiest shopping street. It belongs to the bookshop and lottery office of Jan de Groot, and the sale of tickets for the Generality Lottery, the forerunner of today's Dutch State Lottery, has just opened. Isaac Ouwater painted the scene on a small canvas, with an inn on either side of the shop. Among the onlookers stands a Black man, and the Rijksmuseum notes that more Black people lived in Amsterdam at the time than in the century before.

Street views like this were Ouwater's whole career. He was born in Amsterdam in 1748, the son of a landscape painter who probably taught him, and he chose the town view instead, working in the careful manner of the 17th-century masters Jan van der Heyden and Gerrit Berckheyde. His buildings stand in full daylight and in clear colour. He painted Amsterdam's canals and the Sint-Antoniuswaag weigh house, and also views of Haarlem, Delft, Utrecht, Hoorn and Edam.

In his view of the Dam, the town hall, today the Royal Palace, sits in shadow in the foreground, while the Nieuwe Kerk behind it, with its unfinished tower, catches the sun. Ouwater stopped painting in his last years and died at about 45. He was buried on 4 March 1793 in that same Nieuwe Kerk.