Gerrit Lamberts

1776–1850, Amsterdam

In his early years the draughtsman and etcher, Gerrit Lamberts, was a bookseller and municipal official in Amsterdam. As a sideline he taught himself how to draw and paint watercolours. Around 1810 he was apprenticed to the Amsterdam draughtsman and watercolourist, Daniel Kerkhof (1766–1831), and decided to take up a career as an artist. After 1818 Lamberts regularly displayed drawings at exhibitions in Amsterdam and Haarlem. He kept up his artistic sideline even after his appointment as curator of the recently founded Rijksmuseum in 1824.