Carl Friedrich Werner Ruffo Castle, La Scaletta, Sicily

Carl Friedrich Werner (1808–1894)

Carl Friedrich Heinrich Werner (1808–1894) was born in Weimar. He studied painting under Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld in Leipzig. From 1829 to 1831 he moved to Munich in order to study architecture under the guidance of Fr. von Gartner, but thereafter he returned to painting.

In 1832 Werner won a study scholarship to Italy, which enabled him to visit Venice, Bologna, Florence and Rome. In those years he refined his watercolour skills, and in 1851 he opened his workshop in Venice, becoming a well-known watercolour painter. He exhibited around Europe, in particular travelling often to England, where he exhibited at the New Watercolour Society.

In 1856 Werner moved back to Leipzig. In the following years he undertook several journeys, travelling through Spain in 1856–57, and to Egypt and Palestine between 1862 and 1864. Particularly notable were his watercolours in Jerusalem, where he was one of the few non-Muslims able to gain access to paint the interior of the Dome of the Rock. He published a large body of work in London as 'Jerusalem and the Holy Places', and some more watercolours from Egypt in 1875 as 'Carl Werner's Nile Sketches'. Later in life he became a professor at the Leipzig Academy, dying in Leipzig in 1894.

In 2017 Carl Werner's watercolour of The Holy Rock, Jerusalem sold at Christie's for £209,000.