It goes without saying that one should be careful to automatically trust the factual representation of things and people in old art. In this case, though, we can assume that we get a pretty accurate impression of how a bookstore anno 1820 looked like. The artist, Johannes Jelgerhuis (1770-1836), painted the store of Amsterdam bookseller Pieter Meijer Warnars in commission and he really made effort to minutely depict its details. He truthfully portrayed Warnars and his customers, the numerous bookshelves, the friezes with allegorical scenes, and the exterior. It is known that Jelgerhuis much admired his seventeenth-century predecessor Pieter Saenredam and that he adopted his practice of making meticulous studies of everything he was about to paint.
We know that Meijer Warnars’ shop was situated on the Vijgendam, now Dam-square (known for the Royal Palace) and we see some houses of the nearby Warmoesstraat in the background. The painter knew the store very well: as it happens, Jelgerhuis was not only a painter, but also a celebrated actor and Warnars published a manual for actors that he had written. It is a tempting idea that he applied his knowledge of theatrical presentation to create this convincing impression of the shop.
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