This is the first English translation of Eduard Mörike's Maler Nolten (1832). It is intended to further the rediscovery of a complex prose work by an author whose fame has long resided mainly in his lyric poetry and in his later artist novella Mozart auf der Reise nach Prag (Mozart's Journey to Prague; 1854). Mörike (1804–1875) is usually located between Goethe and Rilke as a major force in the development of nineteenth-century German poetry. His Mozart novella is ranked with Thomas Mann's Death in Venice (1912) as a major contribution to the German artist story. Yet only recently have critics begun to recognize his novel as a remarkably innovative contribution to an emerging modernity in the German and European novel since the late eighteenth century — especially with respect to the Bildungsroman and the artist novel.

Mörike began Nolten the Painter in 1827 and published it in 1832. His work on it accompanies his struggle to reconcile his poetic interests with his studies and calling as a Protestant pastor. In 1826, after four years of study at Tübingen's famous theological seminary (the “Stift”), he began eight years of work as an assistant vicar in a series of parishes in his native Württemberg, interrupted only by a brief attempt to establish himself as a writer for the Stuttgart Damenzeitung in 1828. Yet even as a student, he was well on his way to developing his lyrical talents and imaginative, mythmaking proclivities.