Landscape with a Ruin

August F. Piepenhagen, a professional passementerie and button maker, arrived in Prague in 1811. From the 1820s, alongside his own profession, he devoted himself to painting and operated a private school of landscape painting. Piepenhagen acquired his basic art training from the painter Johann Heinrich Wuest during their journey around Switzerland. The Landscape with a Ruin, dated 1822, when the painter attended the annual exhibition held by the Prague Art Academy for the first time, is a pioneering attempt in Czech graphic arts to depict the landscape employing lithography as an artistic medium. Here, Piepenhagen took full advantage of the possibilities of drawing using soft lithographic chalk to create - with a sensitive painterly treatment - the illusion of space and light in a romantic scene. Through this print, he joined the artists from the Prague Academy’s circle in their interest in the new technique initiated by Antonín Machek, who had opened a lithography workshop in Prague in 1821.