RADEMAKER, Abraham
(b. 1676, Lisse, d. 1735, Haarlem)

Biography

Dutch draughtsman, printmaker and dealer. This self-educated artist lived for some years in Amsterdam, where he married in 1706. He specialized in landscapes depicting Dutch cities and historic monuments. Fantastic scenes and a few portrait studies also belong to his oeuvre. Rademaker's reputation is associated most frequently with his publications of topographical views of the northern Netherlands, the Rhine and Cleves.

For his first, and most famous, comprehensive and historically informative publication, Rademaker etched many of his 300 images after well-known 17th-century drawings and prints. Subsequently, he based his prints on his own drawings. Where monuments have been destroyed and ruins restored beyond recognition, Rademaker's publications provide an invaluable record of Holland in the 17th century and the early 18th. In systematically compiling directories of identifiable places, he codified the inclination to record the local Dutch landscape.