The Darmstadt-based artist August Lucas (1803–1863) was born in the same year and the same town as two outstanding contemporaries: the chemist Justus Liebig and the paleontologist Johann Jakob Kaup. While Lucas and these scientists shared the precise eye of the researcher, Lucas’s perspective was also expanded by his profound affinity with nature. His more than two hundred watercolors and drawings in the Städtische Kunstsammlung Darmstadt have remained largely unknown until now. This is the first catalogue to extensively explore these works. At the same time it sheds light on Lucas’s oeuvre from the main viewpoint of a change in style, triggered by his sojourn in Italy in 1829, the year Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Italian Journey was published. His impressive “friendship” paintings and the later, idealized studies of nature follow the leitmotifs of Romantic literature and provide insight into the society and landscape of the time. Exhibition schedule: Mathildenhöhe Darmstadt, Museum Künstlerkolonie, September 22, 2013–January 5, 2014