Page:The Bohemian Review, vol2, 1918.djvu/28

 siv which combining modern music with racial characteristics became an example of a distinctive Czech musical art, so Mánes determined in that memorable year 1849 to produce out of Bohemian soil and its spirit artistic creations that would portray the charm of Bohemian soul. By painstakingly careful ethnological study Mánes slowly collated the distinctive characteristics of the people into an artistic type of the Czechoslovak race which for many years was supreme in all Bohemian decorative art. Having made his start in romanticism Mánes naturally created a type of a peasant youth and belle, an idealized type of the Czechoslovak nature. It is far indeed from modern naturalism, but just because this idealistic conception grew out of conscientious study of the purest folk surroundings and reached the very kernel of the Czechoslovak national soul, it became so dominant and so permanent that its influence is manifest in all the monumental works which emphasize the Czech national individuality. We meet with this type in Aleš’ lunettes and wall pictures in the foyer of the National Theater in Prague, in Myslbek's statuary groups on Palacký’s bridge, etc. It is a soft, pleasant, kind type, of a full form; the female type has a round face, fine straight nose, small, tempting lips, clear but slightly dreamy eye, rich hair, generous bust, full arms, round hips and oval legs with a firm calf and slender elegant ankles.

In October, 1849, Mánes paid a visit to the Castle Čechy in Moravia, where the Countess Silva-Taroucca with her son received him most cordially. There he spent an entire year. The Haná motif of his “Honeymoon” Mánes engraved in stone for the album of the Society of Decorative Artists; this album appeared in February, 1850 and contained also Hellich’s “Vision in St. Vitus Church” and Havránek’s “Karlštejn”. This first work of Mánes dealing with a Czech folk theme was a great innovation in this respect also, because in comparison with the works of the Prague ateliers it had grown out of the bracing air of real country. Thence the strong, invigorating flavor which Mánes work will forever have. Models of both figures Mánes found in the village below the castle; the background is formed by the wide, fertile plains stretching between the castle and the city of Olomouc. The folk studies that Mánes commenced to make during his stay in the Čechy castle, he kept up continually, but the richest harvest was the journey he undertook in the summer of 1854 into the southwestern corner of Moravia, the land that later became the domain of Jóža Úprka, and into the Hungarian Slovakland. Mánes is the first to undertake in painting what Božena Němec at the same time was doing in literature. He studies not merely the costume with detail and extreme care, that has not been surpassed so far by any one, but like a true artist he studies the movement of bodies, he observes how men walk and stand, how they sit and make motions; and in all this his great pen finds rich material and happy reproduction. Many beautiful folk studies had their birth at this time; they were made use of later as illustrations to folk songs and in the cycle “Music”.

This ideal type, so happily conceived, helps Mánes to find the true expression for the prehistoric Bohemian period. This he applied in his illustrations of the Manuscript of Králův Dvůr, a document supposed to have been composed in the pagan days of Bohemia. In these drawings the distinctive, characteristically Bohemian art of Mánes is brought out so perfectly that it has not yet been equalled by any more recent Czech artist. The drawings of Aleš illustrating the famous manuscript contain a number of excellent sheets and are closely related to the work of Mánes, but while a few may approach his excellence, there is none of higher merit.

One of the culminating works of Mánes is the “HorlogeHorologue [sic]” for the Prague City Hall. The original is now in the City Museum, having been replaced by a copy by Liška. This work consists of twelve allegorical pictures of peasant life, being an idealistic representation of the relations of the tiller of the soil to Mother Earth. The several labors of country life, plowing, sowing, mowing, grain-cutting, cultivating, grape-gathering, etc., are represented in a manner little short of the epochal.

Delightful are his children’s cartonscartoons [sic] and aquarelles describing “Life in a Manor House”. They were made in the years 1855–1860. Mánes, who was familiar with the life of the nobility from his visits to the Castle Čechy, to which for twenty years he used to come just like to his old home, could readily compose these graceful works in which charming children play the role of their elders and bring home to us life in the castle in its most various and intimate forms. Children next to woman play an im-