Salomon Verveer was born to an old established Dutch Jewish family. His parents Loenard Abraham Verveer and Caroline Elkan lived at 18, Dunnen Bierkade, in the Jewish quarter of The Hague. His brothers Elchanon and Maurits were known painters too, while the latter was also one of the first photographers in The Hague. Elchanon and Salomon Verveer are both buried at the Jewish cemetery on the Scheveningseweg in The Hague. Although Salomon Verveer was born a Jew and stayed in the Jewish tradition until his death, only very few of his works depict Jewish scenes or contain Jewish elements. Amongst the works by his hand registered at the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie, only five can be defined as more or less Jewish. Most of them are in private collections. One of his compositions depicts the Jewish quarter in The Hague, with the Boerenpoort or Poort van de Joodsche Gemeente, St. Jacobsstraat (collection Municipal Archives, The Hague). This one is very similar to the present lot.
The present painting is capriccio in the sense that there was no Jewish market known to be in the depicted Jodenbreestraat. Nor is the picture realistic from a topographical point of view. Verveer stresses the Jewish atmosphere in this painting. He places the famous monumental Portuguese synagogue (burnt down by the fire of 18..) in the background and the traditional sukkah (booth or loofhut) in the foreground. The booth, that is to say the wooden construction on the right of the bridge, clearly points at the Jewish feast of Tabernacles. It is in this very way that Verveer, through the present painting, places himself and the spectator in both Jewish environment and Jewish tradition.

See colour illustration