Page:The Bohemian Review, vol2, 1918.djvu/67

 in all province, though the girl is a princess and her horse a wonderful Arabian, the like of which can only be seen in the Sultan’s stables, the whole vision has such a charming Slav type and strong individuality that it makes a permanent impression. Others of Čermák’s fine paintings are “Wounded Montenegrin” (now in the Zagreb Academy) and “Rape of Herzegovinian Woman”, exhibited in Paris in 1861 and honored by the golden medal at Rouen, as well as other great paintings which brought to Čermák distinguished honors—in 1862 the Belgian cross of Leopold and in 1873 the French Legion of Honor. At home, too, his work began to be appreciated, and the Artists’ Club published his works in fine reproductions. Then Čermák returned once more to Bohemian history and in 1875 he painted “Procopius the Great before Naumburg”, but shortly after he died of a pulmonary complaint, April 23, 1872. His remains were transported to Prague and buried with great ceremony on the Olšany Cemetery under a splendid monument. The house on Bethlehem Square, where he was born, bears a memorial tablet by the sculptor Joseph Mauder: Genius holding laurels in the left hand and writing with the other hand Čermák’s name.

Čermák by his removal to Paris tore up the bonds that had up to that time fettered the art of the Czechs. If it be true that up to the fifties the cultivation of arts in Bohemia was far from flourishing in originality, the explanation is found in this that at the beginning of the 19th century Bohemian art found itself under the tutelage of the contemporaneous German art, dry and tasteless, narrow-minded and doctrinaire. We may study the works of men, such as were the first directors of the Prague Academy, Bergler, Waldherr and Ruben, as we would study a historical curiosity, but we cannot admire them as works of art. The bourgeois art produced various historical disasters, battles, solemn entrances, flights, kidnappings, murders, etc., poorly painted and more than mediocre from the viewpoint of invention and composition. This dry desert was freshened up around the year 1840 by the French names of Delacroix, Gallait and others; they heralded freedom from stereotyped production of “pretty groups” and brought instead the assertion of artistic individuality and victory of color. Of course in those days Belgium was farther away from Prague than it is now from Russia. But now and then an artist had enough initiative to go as far as Paris. After Hellich, who made merely occasional brief trips to Paris, it was especially Karel Javůrek (1815–1908) who studied first at Antwerp and then spent a year in Paris under Couture and who, though later he did become a conservative, as he grew old, nevertheless is entitled to be called a pioneer, because his paintings really have color and are not mere colored drawings. Another pupil of Couture was Soběslav Pinkas (1827–1901) whose works were exhibited in the Paris salons in the sixties and many were purchased by Americans; some of his Fayence dishes were bought by the French government for the Limoges museum. When he returned home, he ceased creating, and Prague knew him principally as a professor of drawing and a publicist. In 1886 he founded the Prague Alliance Francaise for the purpose of spreading the knowledge of French language, literature and art.

(1851–1901) spent quite a number of years in Paris, from 1876 to 1893. From Paris his fame spread through out the world, and among Bohemian artists he alone enjoys the distinction of having his painting reproduced on American postage stamps, for the “Columbian issue” of 1893 of the five-cent stamp reproduces his “Columbus at the Court of Isabella”, a painting now in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art as gift of Morris K. Jessup. Brožík’s most popular work is “Master Jan Hus before the Council of Constance”, known to every Bohemian. The original was painted in 1883 and together with Brožík’s “George of Poděbrady Elected King of Bohemia” now decorates the council room of the Prague Town Hall. In 1867 this great master was apprentice in a chinaware factory at Smíchov, a suburb of Prague. The following year the brewer Paul Vňouček or Mňouček, a zealous Bohemian patriot of the days of 1848, sent him to the Prague Painters’ Academy. From there Brožík went to Dresden, then to Munich to Piloty and finally he settled in Paris. His first success was won in 1878, when he exhibited in the Paris salon a great historical painting “Embassy of King Ladislav asking French King Charles VII for His Daughter’s Hand”. Of his other principal works we must mention “Defenestration”, the historical act of 1618, when the Bohemian estates by throwing the emperor’s lieutenants out of the windows of the Prague castle gave the signal for the open-