The Munich painter Wilhelm Gail was one of the first 19th century German artists to explore Spain. During his stay there from 1832 to 1833, he was inspired to create numerous paintings and graphics illustrating the mosques, cathedrals, bullfights and people of this country. He exhibited five of his Spanish paintings at the Munich Academy in 1834, where they were praised by the Bavarian King Ludwig I, who purchased a view of the Great Mosque in Cordoba for the Neue Pinakothek in 1836. Gail continued using his travel sketches of the Alhambra and Cordoba as the basis for oil paintings well into the 1840s.