Though its origins lay in the Val d'Intelvi just north of Como in Lombardy, by the late eighteenth century the Quaglio family of artists had settled in Germany, where Domenico Quaglio the Younger was born in 1787. Domenico was one of the most important members of his family, who had been court artists around Europe from the early seventeenth century.

Domenico's father Giuseppe had settled in 1778 in Munich, where he was a theater and scene painter. At his knee the young artist learned perspective, a skill which was to remain important throughout his career, as he concentrated more and more on architecture. His father's training was supplemented by the teachings of Johann Michael Mettenleiter and Carl Hess in the field of printmaking. In 1803, at the age of sixteen, Domenico became a decorative painter and was appointed the scene painter for the Hoftheater five years later. In 1811, a series of his views of Munich scenes was published. From this point he became especially interested in medieval architecture, a passion which took him on trips throughout southern Germany and into Austria in following years. Having become a founding member of the Munich Kunstverein in 1823, Quaglio by 1829 had so developed his skill in architectural printmaking that an English patron, Henry Gally Knight, sponsored a sketching trip and print series. In 1833, the Bavarian Crown Prince Maximilian, for whom Quaglio had long served as drawing tutor, commissioned him to renovate the castle of Hohenschwangau together with the architect Georg Friedrich Ziebland. Quaglio's historical knowledge was essential to the project and, in fact, he gave up all other activity to concentrate on Hohenschwangau. He died in 1837 in the midst of renovations, which were completed by Moritz von Schwind.

The Crocker drawing shows a dynamic view of a medieval monument in the Danube city of Ulm—the Neuthor or new city gate, which has now been destroyed. Quaglio depicts it diagonally to the picture plane, which, aside from being the most attractive view, allows for a more complete view of the towers, walkways and moat. The drawing was most likely done at the scene, given the quick, gestural use of the portable medium of graphite to depict the forms, which contrasts with the even more gestural shorthand used for the trees and sky.

Another drawing of the same monument, signed similarly and dated 1815, is in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg.(1) It is even more gestural than the Crocker drawing—very much a sketch—and is smaller. The view in the Nuremberg drawing is less inspired, showing the city gate from the side and giving little idea of the building complex as the Crocker drawing does.

These two drawings record an otherwise undocumented visit to Ulm in 1815, a year in which Quaglio also visited the Altmühltal with its many fortresses, Rothenburg, Nuremberg, and Bamberg to sketch castles and ruins.(2) Such trips were often packed with activity: the previous September and October the artist had visited Augsburg, Tittmoning, Neuötting, Burghausen and Salzburg.(3) They also supplied Quaglio with a variety of architectural motifs that he used in print series in following years. Few of these drawings have the casual, personal quality of the Crocker Neuthor in Ulm, which may have been done as a personal memento of an attractive scene.

William Breazeale, in William Breazeale, with Cara Denison, Stacey Sell, and Freyda Spira, A Pioneering Collection: Master Drawings from the Crocker Art Museum, exh. cat. Sacramento and tour, 2010