Tower of Justice, Alhambra, Spain

German landscape and genre painter Felix Possart was born Berlin in 1837. For some years he was a district judge, but changed career late to become a full time painter. Possart studied at the Berlin Academy of Art with Hermann Eschke, Hans Fredrik Gude and Franz Skarbina, and is best known for scenes and landscapes of Southern Spain and Morocco, which he first encountered on study trips in 1882 and 1891. Possart also travelled extensively in Germany's Black Forest and Bavarian highlands - painting German architectural motifs - as well as Switzerland and Italy, where he often summered in Lake Como.

While Possart was himself Jewish, many of the later European orientalists included Israeli and Jewish themes in their paintings alongside wider 'exotic' Middle Eastern, Asian, and North African scenes. The 19th century also saw the birth of Jewish orientalist scholarship, which was often focused on the rich philosophical and poetical traditions of Spanish Jews.