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Gerrit Braamcamp (18 November 1699, in Amsterdam – 17 June 1771, in Amsterdam) was a successful Roman Catholic distiller, timber merchant, and art collector from the Netherlands. One of the most important merchants in Amsterdam, he built a timber yard and shipyard at one end of Hoogte Kadijk, opposite the Dutch East India Company's own shipyard.
Over thirty years he created a major collection of Dutch and Flemish art, totally around 380 works,[2] though only a few of these are now in Dutch museums.[3][4] He owned no fewer than ten works by Metsu.[5] He was friends with the poet Jan Baptista Wellekens and the painters Jacob de Wit, Cornelis Troost, Jan ten Compe, Jacob Xavery and Georges-François Blondel (son of Jacques-François Blondel).
Braamcamp 's family originated in Rijssen. In 1699 his father Jan (1671-1713) married the widow Hendriena van Beeck (-1721) in a 'schuilkerk' in Amsterdam - she lived on the N.Z. Achterburgwal, now called the Spuistraat,[6] where Gerrit also grew up. When his mother died, Gerrit took on responsibility for his two brothers' education. At the time of his marriage to an ironmonger's daughter in 1727 he lived on the Herengracht[7] The couple had two children who died in infancy.
