Page:The Bohemian Review, vol2, 1918.djvu/68

 ing of the thirty years’ war; further “Tu Felix Austria Nube”, a painting ordered by Francis Joseph in 1897 and for which he was ennobled. Outside of his historical groups noteworthy also are some of his country scenes from Normandy.

The chief excellence of Brožík’s paintings consists in the richness and color. His pictures are brilliant, virile and powerfully carried out, and no critic will find fault with his judgment of the color scale. His weak points are partly technical; he always tried to have the light come from a single source, manipulating the scene accordingly, and violated the background perspective by crowding the figures close together, even where it was not necessary. A graver charge is that all his historical painting is too theatrical. Bro59k, like Piloty, Munkacsy and others, handled his figures on the same principle that makes second-rate actors believe that they must always be facing the audience. Many figures, like the chorus or the mob of the stage, are there only to fill up the space, even though they may take no interest in the historical event. And finally the painting only succeeds to portray a picturesque event, but does not suggest at the same time the connection with the past and the future, in other words the causes and effects of the particular great moment. For that one must be more than a brilliant painter, one ought to be also a strong and deep psychologist. This is something that Mucha is attempting now in his gigantic historical pictures which will be twenty in number and are intended to bring out the great epochs in the evolution of the Slav race.