Tlos

Muller pursued an active career as a painter of landscapes and genre subjects, but his ambitions were cut short by his early death. While he achieved fame as a rapid and fluent watercolour sketcher, he was disappointed by his failure to find recognition as an oil painter. He travelled to the Near East twice in search of new and exotic subjects, first to Egypt in 1838-39, and later, in 1843-44, to south-west Turkey, where he drew the people, the scenery and the ancient remains of Lycia.

In this watercolour Muller has focused on the Roman arches on the eastern face of the rocky crag occupied by the acropolis of the Lycian city of Tlos. The ruins are seen as part of the rugged mountain scenery, which he has depicted with subtly varying tints of earthy colours applied with broad sweeps of his brush, leaving areas of white paper to convey the transparent elements of light and air.