Vismarkt
Vismarkt
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The Vismarkt with the Kalis Bridge — This view from the Maartens Bridge across the Oudegracht has changed little in a century and a half. The view is dominated by the bridge where fish are traded, hence the name Vismarkt (Fish Market). Then there's the Kalisbrug, originally a medieval bridge that was widened to accommodate a market. The fish auction house stands in the middle, the predecessor of the present small building located more to the left, which houses the stamp market on Saturdays nowadays. To the right of the bridge, stairs lead to the wharf where two boats are moored and some fish caddies hang in the water. Fish caddies are wooden tanks in which live fish were kept.
On the drawing to the right are the facades of the houses on the Vismarkt, the street that got its name from the fish market that took place here for centuries. Many of these houses used to house fishmongers. In 1873, the year of the depiction of this tile picture, some fish stores were still in full operation. Beneath the awnings are counters on which the fish is displayed. Some houses still have an old stepped gable or a bell gable, but most of the facades were simplified in the nineteenth century and given a frame gable.
The houses on the left face the Zoutmarkt, the Salt Market. Salt was an indispensable product for the fish trade, so the salt market was located near the fish market. These houses still had their main entrance on the Zoutmarkt in 1873, but most of them gradually became backhouses of the houses on Choorstraat. The street was bordered here by a masonry wall of varying height, essentially an elevation of the wharf wall. This was an old-fashioned construction that required a lot of maintenance. It was therefore increasingly often replaced by cast-iron counters, such as those seen on the Kalisbrug and along the Vismarkt. This happened from the eighteenth century onwards. On a lower part of the wharf wall, a bench was placed with a cast-iron counter as its back. The wharf cellars of the houses on the Zoutmarkt do not have a wharf.
The large house on the left, behind the bridge, is on the corner of the Hanengeschrei, the short street between Choorstraat and Kalisbrug. In 1873 it apparently housed a coffee house. In the background, this townscape is terminated by the light sandstone facade of the City Hall. The part with the left four windows dates from the major renovation of 1824-1830 in which the city hall also received its classical façade. The right part was added later in the nineteenth century in the same style.
Like many painters of his time, Willem Cornelis van Dijk experimented with the new medium of photography. A photograph of him has been preserved that depicts exactly the same image. He probably used this photograph in his studio as a mnemonic for this very detailed drawing.
