View of the River Amstel in Amsterdam

Gerrit Toorenburgh signed this view of the Amstel at the lower left, Toorenburgh Pinxit, Latin for painted it, and left it without a date. The museum gives none either, so it can only be placed somewhere in his working life, which ran from the late 1740s to his death in 1785.

The Amstel is the river that gave Amsterdam its name, after the dam built across it where the city began. The canvas is small, 39 by 47 centimetres. It was bought at some point after 1817, and it belongs to the Mauritshuis, which shows it in its Gallery Prince Willem V on the Buitenhof in The Hague.