The Bookshop of Pieter Meijer Warnars (1792-1869) on the Vijgendam, Amsterdam

Before he painted this shop, Jelgerhuis drew it at exactly the same size. That drawing, in pencil touched with watercolour and made in or before 1820, is also in the Rijksmuseum, which acquired it in 2008, so the museum now owns both the full-scale plan and the finished canvas.

The shop stood on the Vijgendam, a name that vanished in 1957, when the whole square officially became simply the Dam. Through the open door you look straight out onto it, with a horse and passers-by in the street. Inside, a customer in a top hat leans on the counter with two assistants behind it, and a man in a grey coat writes at a desk by the window. Overhead, panels painted in grey show triumphal chariots, and a long printed sheet hangs down the bookcase at left.