language and letters came to be a matter of national concern, the efforts put forth in the sphere of art were of interest only to a narrow circle of amateurs, recruited for the most part from the aristocracy. In 1796, these amateurs founded at Prague the Patriotic Society of Art Patrons. The Society set itself to make Bohemia forget the loss of her treasures by organising a picture-gallery, and to replace the former apprenticeship in the studios of masters by a regular scholastic training, through the foundation of the Academy of Fine Arts in 1800. But as these efforts were not rooted in the depths of the national soul, they awakened no echo in the public at large and met with no striking success. Accordingly, during the first half of the nineteenth century, art in Bohemia was connected with the national life by a remarkably slender thread.
As for the Academy, the part that it played in the history of Czech art was a somewhat inglorious one, so mediocre were its directors and so autocratic was their sway. The first of them, Joseph Bergler, a disciple of Mengs, had reduced the great problems of painting to a tawdry method of design. To think that Prague knew no other classicism than that of Bergler, and that the greatness of a David, the beauty and purity of contemporary French art were entirely outside its ken! The results of Bergler’s teaching were altogether disastrous. His pupils turned out brainless designs, void of expression and utterly lacking in beauty. From time to time it fell to their lot to paint some altarpiece for a church dismantled by Joseph II, but the colouring is dingy and the draughtsmanship commonplace. The more capable soon deserted Bergler, and sought a new direction for their talent.
The new direction came with that powerful intellectual and spiritual movement known as Romanticism. At Prague itself the tide of Romanticism was beginning to sweep through the
