CARL FRIEDRICH HEINRICH WERNER (Weimar 1808 - 1894 Leipzig)
A Beautiful Water Carrier
graphite underdrawing, watercolor and gouache with point of brush. 6 3/4 x 4 1/2" (17 x 11.5cm). signed and dated 1870.
Known as an architect and landscape painter in both oil and watercolor, Werner traveled extensively. This small yet stunning work attests to the mastery of his technique, exacting and lucid and extraordinary in capturing the light, color and texture of drapery or stone. His work conveyed the atmosphere of foreign places and their people, as well as the mystique of non-western cultures, so much so that his oeuvre is as compelling now as it was in the 19th century.
After studying painting with Shnorr von Carolsfeld at the Leipzig Academy and then architecture in Munich from 1829-31, Werner left for Italy on a scholarship in 1832, visiting Venice, Bologna, Florence and Rome. In 1851 he established an atelier for teaching watercolor in Venice and won recognition for his work in this medium. He exhibited around Europe and often in England at the new Watercolour Society. In 1856 he returned to Germany but soon left for England 1856/7 and Spain 1862. From 1862- 1864 he was in Palestine and Egypt. In Jerusalem, he was permitted access to the interior of the Dome of the Rock, which few non Muslims attained. Later in 1875 he was in Greece, by 1877/78 in Sicily, and in 1891 in Rome. He returned to Leipzig to be a professor at the Leipzig Academy and died there in 1894.
It must have been between 1862 and 1864 that a preliminary study or model for the present drawing was made, as our drawing is dated 1870 when the artist was presumably back in his studio. A watercolor of The Tomb of Sheikh Ababde at al-Minya shows a palace not unlike the one in the background here and it is also by water. It seems quite likely then that the present drawing is set in the same city which is south of Cairo and north of the Valley of the Kings and Luxor.