Café 't Smalle, Amsterdam, Netherlands
"Café 't Smalle, Amsterdam, Netherlands"" Painting by Gary Smith

Café 't Smalle, Amsterdam, Netherlands

September 2021   •   Oil on Board   •   9" x 12"

This is a painting of the interior of Café 't Smalle, a traditional brown café located in the Jordaan area of Amsterdam. We visited here in June of 2019 and sat at the bar for a drink, though most people were sitting on the canal-side terrace.

Brown cafés are small neighbourhood bars where locals and visitors gather to relax and chat over a beer, a coffee, a snack, or a tulip-shaped glass of oude or jonge jenever. They are ostensibly named after the colour of their tobacco-stained walls, though smoking in public places has been banned for two decades in the Netherlands now, so the only brown decor comes from paint and wood.