Thöming was born at Eckernförde on the east coast of Holstein. In 1823-24 he trained at the Academy in Copenhagen as the pupil of the landscape artist J. P. Møller. Eckersberg’s marine paintings, however, were also of great significance to him. After some years in Germany, Thöming moved to Italy where, with a few interruptions, he spent the rest of his life – the winter at Rome and the summer at Naples.
Thöming’s speciality was the depiction of landscapes along the coast of the Gulf of Naples. In particular the portrayal of the Blue Grotto on Capri, which was discovered in 1826, was a particular achievement that gained him great popularity. And from the beginning of the 1830s it is as though the amazing blue of the grotto spreads to the water in all his paintings of coastal scenes.
In this painting, the exaggerated use of azure had not yet asserted itself in Thöming’s paintings. But this is an effective portrayal of the small natural harbour, sheltered by the characteristically projecting cliff of Scoglio delle Sirene.
Along with five other Thöming acquisitions, the picture came to hang on Thorvaldsen’s wall in the Casa Buti at Rome, where many artists were able to see it. Subsequently others, including Petzholdt, Gurlitt and Købke, painted the very same locality.
Both professionally and privately, the 1840s were Thöming’s happiest time. He became partly paralysed as early as 1853, and he spent the last 20 years of his life poor and neglected, incapable of painting.
