In Rome in 1830 Eugen von Gurard found much that would form the basis of his future style and his attitudes to landscape painting. Rome was a vibrant place for artists at this time, with communities of German, Dutch, French and English artists. The German community was the largest, with approximately 500 artists clustered around the Spanish steps who exchanged ideas in the Caff Greco. By 1830 a new generation of landscape painters, many of whom had been encouraged to go to Rome by Wilhelm von Schadow, the director of the Dsseldorf Academy, came to paint the city and nearby towns like Tivoli and Olevano. Goethe remained the essential guide for Germans in Italy and his influence was transmitted through the work of Jacob Philipp Hackert, whose ideas underpinned some of the attitudes to truth in nature extolled by von GurardŐs teacher in Rome, Gian Battista Bassi. Two landscape painters that von Gurard was later to cite as important to him, Joseph Anton Koch and Johann Christian Reinhart lived and worked in Rome during von GurardŐs two-year period in the city.