View of the Damrak, Amsterdam, at night

In 1887 Isaac Israels moved to Amsterdam, where he was at the centre of the Tachtigers (Eighties Movement) of writers and painters. Among his friends were George Hendrik Breitner, Lodewijk van Deyssel, Frans Erens, Max Liebermann, Jan Pieter Veth and Jan Voerman. The quicky developing city of Amsterdam, with its half million inhabitants, new infrastructure and impressive building projects, provided the artist with an inspiring range of everyday life subject-matter. His precise style, with predominant soft grey and brown tones, would develop into a more fluent technique which was used to record contemporary life. In the present lot the influence of his fellow painter and friend Breitner, with whom he worked together in this period, is clearly visible.