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Károly Lajos Libay was a typical travelling painter of the 19th century. He travelled throughout his homeland, Upper Hungary, as well as in Austria, Germany, and Italy; then, accompanied by his Viennese patron, he also visited Egypt. Later, following the custom of the times, he published a collection of lithographs based on his aquarelles. The fine details painted after nature and their harmonious, rich colouring made his "vedutas" a great success.
The aquarelle Regensburg: View of the River Bank was painted during a trip to Germany in 1849. Libay, always travelling with a sketchbook, freshly drafted whatever he saw; in this case, a distant panorama of Regensburg and the rustic surroundings of a fisherman's shack along the bank of the river. In his best works, Libay no longer followed the strict rules of Academic landscape painting. He placed the chief motif, the view of the city, in the far distance, and closed down the foreground in the left with a daring diagonal line. The contrast between the confined and the almost empty zones adds to the artfulness of the composition.
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