Picture the Golden Age of Dutch painting, and works by Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Ruisdael come to mind. Less familiar today are the paintings of Jan van der Heyden (1637–1712), even though many consider him to have been Holland’s preeminent painter of cityscapes. His exquisite use of detail and limpid light are much in evidence in a handsome installation at the Bruce Museum, which includes more than 50 of his paintings and drawings as well as several objects from his second career as a businessman-inventor. Drawn from several dozen museums and private collections, the works represent the first major exhibition ever of his work in this country.

What Jan Steen did for courtyards and interiors, van der Heyden did for Amsterdam’s neighborhoods. With a jeweler’s precision he captured the city’s ornate, gabled façades and tree-lined canals, often enclosing them in a wondrously lucid atmosphere. “The Oude Delft Canal and the Oude Kerk Delft” (1675), for instance, vividly conveys the effect of a bowl of shadow nestled between houses on either side of a canal. Details of façades, walks, trees, and several figures enliven this shaded zone — not congesting it, as they might in a less skillful work, but evoking subtle degrees of reflected light. The sweep of a stone dock deftly accommodates the gesture of a dog, and responds to a ramp’s diagonal on the opposite bank. Behind rises the sunlit spire of the Old Church itself, severely radiant in its contrasting planes. Hanging next to it at the museum is a much earlier, undated attempt at the same scene; its inert tones and stiff perspectival lines show how much the artist had learned in the intervening years.

Van der Heyden preferred casual street scenes to formal “postcard” views, often cropping portions of famous structures or hiding graceful architecture behind trees. For all the exactitude of his technique, his subjects suggest a roving, independent curiosity, as well as an affection for his hometown’s everyday bustle.

Wall texts prove that his method was in fact far more than faithful recording. Working in the studio from a repertoire of drawings — some of them produced many years earlier — the artist constantly rearranged the relationships of structures, sometimes even combining elements from different towns. In “Square With a Church Recalling St. Andreas, Dusseldorf” (c. 1666–67), he convincingly grafts the cupola from Amsterdam’s town hall onto a German church.

Assistants usually added the figures dotting his scenes. These shop, beg, deliver goods, and chat with animation, but never compete with the buildings, the real personalities here. Van der Heyden apparently invented his own expedient method of delineating countless brick and cobblestone joints: transferring inked lines from printed patterns. In light of their highly synthetic facture, the naturalism of his images becomes all the more extraordinary.

Some experiments are mostly puzzling. A very odd perspective distorts the cupola in his early painting “The Town Hall of Amsterdam With the Dam” (1667). Wall text explains how the enterprising artist compensated by attaching to the frame a special viewfinder — now lost — to ensure a particular viewing angle. (Nearby, a nifty half-scale model demonstrates the principle.) Next to the painting hangs a second version, produced a year later, this time with the cupola’s perspective in good order.

Also on view are two of his rare still lifes and a number of fantastic, ruinfilled landscapes that possibly influenced similar 18th century “capriccios” by Canaletto.

By his late 30s, the artist was increasingly distracted by other pursuits. He designed and promoted a new street lamp, more than 2,500 of which eventually illuminated Amsterdam’s roads and canals. His invention for an improved fire pump led to his appointment as the city’s fire chief in 1682. On view is a copy of a book, written and illustrated by van der Heyden and his son, that proved to be the pre-industrial era’s most comprehensive account of firefighting techniques. A side gallery displays more than a dozen of his drawings for the book; these promoted the equipment produced by his own factory, a business that was to make him a very wealthy man.

It’s tempting to believe that these distractions, as well as the artist’s managerial bent, account for the comparatively labored atmosphere of some paintings. With its intense, crisp hues and details, a work like “View of the Keizersgracht and Westerkerk in Amsterdam” (c. 1667–70) is nothing if not luminous. And yet, the trees and buildings feel somewhat isolated by the hard light and opaque shadows. Gone is the ordering embrace of atmosphere that characterizes his best work, or the landscapes of his contemporary Ruisdael.

Painted in his final years, “Still Life With Globe, Books and Other Objects” (1711) arranges worldly and sacred objects in sturdy perspective, but with little of the supple spirit of earlier works. One imagines the fire chief working to make painting as safe as Amsterdam’s housing stock.

A beautifully illustrated catalog accompanies the exhibition, which was curated by the museum’s executive director, Peter Sutton. The exhibition travels to the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, in February.

Until January 10 (One Museum Drive, Greenwich, Conn., 203-869-0376).