Die Ruine Stahleck bey Bacharach. / Les Ruines de Stahleck près de Bacharach.

Title

Die Ruine Stahleck bey Bacharach. / Les Ruines de Stahleck près de Bacharach.

Description

Decorative view of Stahleck Castle. Its name means ;impregnable castle on a crag;, from the Middle High German words stahel (steel) and ecke. It has a water-filled partial moat, a rarity in Germany. Built on the orders of the Archbishop of Cologne, it was destroyed in the late 17th century but rebuilt in the 20th and is now a hostel.

ca. 1835

Artist

Bodmer (1809-1893)

Johann Carl Bodmer, he was a Swiss-French printmaker, etcher, lithographer, zinc engraver, draughtsman, painter, illustrator and hunter. Known as Karl Bodmer in literature and paintings, as a Swiss and French citizen, his name was recorded as Johann Karl Bodmer and Jean-Charles Bodmer, respectively. He is best known in the United States as a painter who captured the American West of the 19th century. He is best known in the United States as a painter who captured the American West of the 19th century. Bodmer had 81 aquatints made from his work to illustrate Prince Maximilian's book entitled Maximilian Prince of Wied's Travels in the Interior of North America. By 1828, Bodmer had left his native Switzerland to work as a painter and engraver in the German city of Koblenz. It was there that he and his work came to the attention of Prinz Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied. This German aristocrat had successfully led a scientific expedition to Brazil in 1815–1817. He decided to embark on another such venture, this time to North America and especially the American West. He hired Bodmer to accompany his expedition and make a visual record of the places and peoples encountered, through painting, drawings, etc. The aristocrat was known popularly to naturalists then and now as Prince Max. After delays, Bodmer, in the company of Prince Max and David Dreidoppel, a huntsman and taxidermist, sailed for North America on 17 May 1832. Arriving in Boston, Massachusetts, on 4 July, the three encountered hardships and delays caused largely by a cholera epidemic in the eastern states. It swept across the northern tier to Michigan via travelers on the waterways. The three men finally reached Pittsburgh, and started from there October 8 to travel west along the Ohio River. They arrived in Mt. Vernon, Indiana about midnight on 18 October. The next morning, the party made their way to New Harmony, Indiana. In April 1833, Prince Max and Bodmer set out from St. Louis, Missouri by steamboat and later keelboat up the Missouri River. Bodmer had extensively documented the journey with visual images, while Prince Max took copious notes for the book he intended to write.