Isaak Ouwater Amsterdam 1750 - 1793

Ouderkerk is a small village a short distance south of Amsterdam, which has so far firmly resisted being absorbed into the encroaching suburbs.  The bridge known as De Lange Brug lasted with alterations until 1938 (the lifting section survives in the Openluchtmuseum in Arnhem), but the inn facing it, De Oude Prins, still stands.  The church beyond is seen after its rebuilding in 1774-5.  The gentleman greeted by a couple in the foreground has just alighted from a horse-drawn passenger ferry, still then the principal means of transport in a land rather more water-logged than it is today; the fodder on the quay beyond is for the horse.  Ouderkerk was the first stage on the busy trekvaart route from Amsterdam to Utrecht and Gouda.

A drawing by Johannes or Hermanus Petrus Schouten of the same view from the same point, excluding the tea-house at the extreme left of the picture, is in the Van Eeghen collection in the Amsterdam Archive (see B. Bakker, E. Fleurbaay, A.W. Gerlagh, De verzameling Van Eeghen.  Amsterdamse tekeningen 1600-1950, Zwolle 1988, p. 167, no. 130, reproduced).