Page:Bohemia; a brief evaluation of Bohemia's contribution to civilization (1917).pdf/48

 learned to love the Bohemian people through his own study of their soul and mode of life. He goes to Moravia among the rough and simple Slovaks and depicts them in the midst of their hard, rough toil and pictures the happy side of their life of work and thrift. The figures in his pictures have about them a certain quaint, rugged but healthful humor. Schwaiger’s art is likewise rugged, energetic, full of strength.

Jaroslav Panuška created works of incomparable humor and wonderful imagination. His decayed willows, glittering with ghostly lights, his spectres, his haunted mills, his witches, his national strong men, his robber and peasant huts in the woods, his ruined fairy castles, adorn the pages of many famous literary works for Bohemian children.

But one of the greatest of the Bohemian artists, who found his inspiration in the soul of his people, is the Moravian Slovak, Jóža Úprka. Disgust with the artificiality of city life brought him back to the good Slovak peasantry. In a quiet retreat in southern Moravia, he lived simply with his beloved country-folk, depicting their soul and their daily life. His paintings are passionate songs of color, light, youth and strength and joy of life; they are passionate paeans of the hot southern Moravian sun and the healthy vigorous people of that wonderful land. His typical peasant figures; his gray-haired pious country patriarchs; his country maidens in their Slovak costumes with their riot of magnificent colors; his dreamy autumnal meadows with their fires and šohaji ; his huts with painted entrances; his national pilgrimages to cathedrals; sacred spots; his mowers wet with the morning dew; his laborers wet with the sweat of toil; his šohaji on horseback on holidays; the peasantry in song, dance, work, prayer without want, tears or sorrow in their happy moods, manifesting their happy life: these were the things clothed in his exulting colors which conquered the European world of Art, when in its lists appeared this young strong barbarian—Úprka.