Watercolour paintings of North African, Turkish or Egyptian scenes became very popular in the nineteenth century. The increasing ease of travel meant that many more artists, illustrators, travellers and tourists were able to sketch and paint rapidly in watercolour those places they had only previously known from written accounts. Several thousand illustrated books on the subject of the Holy Land were published throughout the nineteenth century.

The Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem was built by the Ummayyad Caliph, Abd al-Malik in AD 687-691. The circular shrine surrounds the rock from which Muhammad ascended to Heaven on his horse Buraq, and is one of Islam's most sacred buildings. The rock is also revered in Jewish tradition as the site where Abraham offered his son Isaac as a sacrifice.

Although German by birth, Carl Werner lived and painted watercolours for nearly twenty years in Rome, and also exhibited in London and other European cities. He visited Palestine and Egypt in 1862-1864. As a student, he had studied architecture. This would explain his confident and accurate rendering of the splendid interior of the ancient mosque, with its highly polished marble surfaces and intricate inlaid stonework. This watercolour was reproduced as a colour lithograph in his book Jerusalem, Bethlehem and the Holy places published in 1865.