The Night Watch was painted for the Great Hall (Groote Sael) of the Kloveniersdoelen, headquarters of several companies of the city’s militia. It formed part of an ensemble together with six other large group portraits, all painted between 1640 and 1645. By the end of the seventeenth century the Kloveniersdoelen had lost its original purpose as headquarters for the Arquebusiers (Kloveniers) and from that moment on functioned mostly as meeting place and as guest house for important guests. Its great hall was used for feasts and banquets.

In 1682 the Amsterdam Burgomasters decided to relocate the paintings from all three city Doelens to the newly-build Town Hall, the present-day Royal Palace on Dam Square. Lacking money to finish the elaborate decoration scheme of the Town Hall, the existing painted group portraits of militia and governors from these buildings formed an easy and appropriate way to solve this problem. It took a full ten years until the first paintings started being moved, first from the Voetboogdoelen (crossbowmen's civic guard). Around this time, the paintings were regularly treated, whether still in the Doelens or already in the Town Hall. A name that often shows up in the city archives in connection to the repair of paintings, is that of the distiller, painter and appraiser Jan Rosa (c. 1621/22?–1693). However, since it wasn’t standard practice then to specify on which paintings work was being done, we cannot know for certain if he also treated The Night Watch, let alone what he did exactly.

On 23 May 1715, the order was given ‘to clean the large painting by Rembrandt hanging in the Room of the Kloveniersdoelen, and to move the same to the [small] War Council Room (Kleine Krijgsraadkamer) of the Town Hall’. Unfortunately, we lack further records, so we do not know exactly when, or by whom, this was carried out. Generally, the time between such an assignment and the moment it was carried out would not have been long. With some caution, we can therefore say that the painting was moved in, or shortly after, 1715. Taking into consideration the people working on paintings for the city of Amsterdam in this period, the painter Jan Smit (c. 1658/59–1720) and the art dealer Christiaen Rademaker (c. 1675–1727) are plausible candidates.

Painter, connoisseur and restorer Jan van Dijk (c. 1690–1769), who was keeper of the Town Hall between 1746 and 1766, provides us with more information on what was done to The Night Watch. In 1751 and 1752 he treated all paintings in the Small War Council Room, including The Night Watch. In 1756, he published a small volume called Kunst en Historiekundige Beschryving en Aanmerkingen over alle de Schilderyen op het Stadhuis te Amsterdam (Art and Historical Description and Comments about all the Paintings in the City Hall in Amsterdam), in which he lamented the fact that the painting was cut down in size to fit between the two doors of the small war council room. On the left side, two whole figures had been removed, and on the right side part of the drummer. Van Dijk based this on the copy of The Night Watch attributed to Gerrit Lundens, which he referred to as ‘the real model now in the hands of Mr. Boendermaker’. Although we now no longer doubt that The Night Watch was indeed cut down, it is interesting that by the end of the nineteenth century, a heated debate arose whether or not the painting was in fact cut down. This dispute would last well in the twentieth century.