Mannheim, Germany, after Birket Foster, Steel Engraving, circa 1865

About this sheet

This steel engraving shows Mannheim seen across the water from a stone quay. In the foreground a broad sailing barge lies moored with its mast and rigging raised, workmen handling barrels and sacks on deck and on the quay, and a man with a fishing net stands on the steps beside an iron railing. Across the calm water the town spreads along the bank among trees, with a large building at left and, at the center, a domed church flanked by towers. On the right a gabled house stands at the water's edge, where a rider waters his horses in the shallows and small boats lie moored. A wide sky of piled summer clouds takes up more than half the image.

The plate is lettered "B. Foster" at lower left and "E. I. Roberts" at lower right, with the title MANNHEIM. in open capitals and the imprint "William Mackenzie, London, Edinburgh & Glasgow." at the foot of the sheet.

Mannheim lies at the meeting of the Rhine and the Neckar in Baden Württemberg. Laid out as a planned city on a grid in the seventeenth century, it became the residence of the Electors Palatine in the eighteenth century, when the great palace and the baroque Jesuit Church with its dome and twin towers were built, and it grew into one of the great river ports of Germany in the nineteenth century.

Myles Birket Foster (1825 to 1899) was one of the most popular Victorian illustrators and watercolorists, much admired for his river and village scenes, and his drawings of Rhine and Continental towns were widely engraved for illustrated travel books. William Mackenzie of Glasgow issued many such views in his large illustrated works of the 1860s and 1870s. This is a lively, well balanced composition and a clean impression of a less common German view.

This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed. Any framed or interior images are shown for presentation and inspiration only, unless the listing explicitly states that the item is sold framed.