Johann Caspar Weidenmann

In Florence, he led quite a solitary life for almost five years, training his artistic skills on his own by copying famous paintings at the city's art galleries.

In Rome, however, he quickly made friends with other young artists from German-speaking countries and from Scandinavia, who held regular meetings at their social club, visited each other's studios and frequented the city's pubs.

He felt forced to paint subjects that did not particularly interest him, but which he was occasionally able to sell in his home town: genre scenes, portraits and copies of Old Masters.

Deeply impressed by the paintings Vernet had brought back from Algeria and by the stories he told the young painters about this country, Weidenmann eventually decided to go to North Africa himself in 1838.

But whereas Vernet had undertaken an official French mission, Weidenmann was one of the first European artists to travel to Algeria on his own, out of thirst for adventure.

[3] From Algiers, Weidenmann travelled east: first on an overcrowded ship to Bône; from there on horseback to Constantine, which had only been captured by French troops seven months earlier.

He made good use of every opportunity to get to know the countryside and the local people and to paint; his travel expenses were met by portraying Europeans.

On his exhausting journey back to Bône, he fell ill with malaria and had to spend two months on the sick bed.

[4] In Switzerland, the paintings and drawings Weidenmann had brought home from North Africa were admired by everybody and praised by art experts.

Weidenmann depicted the scenery of North Africa, the foreign people and their culture – hitherto completely unknown to most Europeans – exactly as he saw them, without romanticizing.

[11] In addition, an essay published six years after Weidenmann's death contains long extracts from letters he wrote while he was travelling across Algeria.