I don’t know if it’s an actual genre, but there is a kind of 19th century Dutch cityscape painting that I particularly enjoy. These paintings feature streets lined with older brick buildings, and are atmospheric and richly textural, a visual combination that makes for delightful eye candy.
The cityscapes of Adrianus Everson are a prime example. Unlike his contemporary Cornelis Springer, who represented real locations in his paintings, Everson took liberties and constructed his imagined scenes from reference to numerous real structures as well as made-up buildings.
Eversen often emphasized the charm of his views with dramatic contrasts in lighting, juxtaposing dark subjects against light backgrounds and vice versa.
Unfortunately, many of the images of his work available online are not of the best quality, but there are enough to get an idea of the appeal of his work — including a few images in high enough resolution to see some of the detail of his approach, which can be surprisingly loose and painterly.
One of the best sources for quality images is a Google image search of Sotheby’s.
The Rijksmuseum also has a number of his drawing and watercolors in their collection.
