Carl Friedrich Heinrich Werner (Weimar 1808-1894 Leipzig)

A pupil of Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Werner was primarily a watercolour painter and he exhibited a number of times at the New Watercolour Society in London. The present drawing, with its inscription in English, is presumably one of the works executed with a view to exhibition in England. The date places it between two of Werner's major study tours, to Spain in 1856-7 and then to Egypt and Palestine in 1862-4.

The splendid fortress of the Wartburg, perched above the town of Eisenach in Thuringia, dates from the 11th Century and played a key role in the 19th-Century German imagination, not only as the place where Martin Luther had translated the New Testament into German, but also as the focal point for many demonstrations calling for German unity. The Armoury, of which a glimpse is offered in this drawing, had a splendid collection including pieces once worn by Henry II of France, Pope Julius II and Frederick the Wise. Unfortunately the armour was taken by soldiers of the Soviet Occupation Army in 1946 and much of the collection remains lost.