This romantic painting depicts view from Belgrade Fortress over the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, the Great War Island, and the peninsula Zemun( in German: Semlin , now is Belgrade district ).

This work was executed in the middle of 19th century by good listed Austrian landscape painter and stage decorator Josef Hoffmann (1831 Vienna - 1904 Vienna).  

A student of Sebastian Wegmayr, he spent several months at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. At the age of 18, he traveled with a friend of his father through Styria, Croatia, and Serbia, and in 1850 to Persia. Returning to Vienna, he joined Carl Rahl's studio in 1851 and remained his student until 1856. He then traveled via Munich and Tyrol to Venice, then to Greece in 1857 and Rome in 1858, where he stayed for six years. The large-scale, ideal Greek landscapes were created or designed here.

He was a representative of the heroic-historicist style in landscape painting. From 1887 onwards, he traveled again, including to Tunis, Algiers, and the Balearic Islands. In 1889, he returned to Turkey, then to Egypt in 1891. From 1893 to 1894, he traveled around the world, visiting India, Java, China, Japan, and North America.

Literature: artist  lexicon by Thieme/Becker  XVII, 1924, by Prof.H.Fuchs, Painters of  19. century, II, 1973; in on-line: Wikipedia in German.

Inscriptions: signed lower left, on the back is pencil inscription in German: ”Festung Belgrad mit Blick a/(auf) Semlin”.

Technique: oil on paper, laid down on cardboard, original period frame.

Measurements: unframed w 15 1/2" x h 10 3/4" (39,5 x 27,5 cm), framed 20 3/4" x 15 1/8" (52,5 x 38,5 cm).

Condition: good.