This object is a lithograph of the Texas Hill Country in Fredericksburg made by the artist and photographer Hermann Lungkwitz in the mid nineteenth century. Karl Friedrich Hermann Lungkwitz was a German artist trained at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Dresden, Saxony in the 1840s. In 1850, Lungkwitz and his family immigrated to the United States, moving from New York to Texas, where he started in New Braunfels in 1851, but eventually moved and settled in Fredericksburg in 1852. They purchased a farm on the Pedernales River, where he and his brother-in-law, Richard Petri, also an artist, grew potatoes and began their first paintings, sketches, and lithographs of the Texas countryside around their farm. In the mid-1850s, he began sketching and painting the San Antonio area as well – particularly the missions and town scenery.
By 1859, Lungkwitz began learning the art of photography with William DeRyee and Wilhelm Thielepape. They traveled between Texas towns to take photographs and display their images in magic lantern shows, in which pictures and portraits were projected on to a screen for an audience to view.
In the last years of the Civil War, the political climate in Fredericksburg became too much for the family to handle and they moved to San Antonio in 1864. Here, with the help of Thielepape, he sold his paintings to provide a small income before opening a school for drawing and drafting. In 1866, he opened a photographic studio with Carl von Iwonski, focusing primarily on offering inexpensive portraits of the people of San Antonio, which he continued until 1870 when he was made the official photographer of the General Land Office in Austin, a position he held for four years.
By 1874, Lungkwitz turned back to his love for painting – he sketched and painted scenes all around the Austin area and taught drawing at the Jacob Bickler’s German-American Select School for Boys. He continued painting and teaching for the remainder of his life.
Hermann Lungkwitz is responsible for the majority of the images we have of the 1800s Texas Hill Country, the missions of Texas, and much of old San Antonio.