Ruin of the Tiefburg at Handschuhsheim

A precocious draftsman, Fohr spent the summer of 1813 making landscape studies in the Neckar region of southwestern Germany. He later worked them up into highly finished watercolors like this one--which are admirable for their pictorial inventiveness, sharpness of detail, and delicacy of color.

The artist presented these sheets, bound into an album, to the local sovereign, Grand Duchess Wilhelmine of Hessen, in order to secure her patronage. This image of a ruined medieval fortress near Heidelberg is infused with Fohr's Romantic sensibility and evokes his fascination with Germany's chivalric past.