time for a truer vision of Nature and of life. The need of a new artistic dictator for Bohemia was felt, and the painter Christian Ruben was summoned from Düsseldorf. But this German, devoid of that keen sense of life and nature which marks the true Romantics, was not the man to endow Prague with a living art. Still, by confronting his pupils with genuine models, he taught them to appreciate realism of detail, and were it not for the false sentiment and insufferable theatricality of his paintings, we might perhaps here and there admire certain portions of his work, which show careful study and soundness of execution. Moreover, from Ruben’s school there issued the first generation that had any national consciousness, the one that laid the foundations of the Czech art of to-day.
Until about the middle of the century, plastic art in Bohemia was only Czech in as far as the subjects were taken from the glorious past of the Czech country. The subjects from Czech history especially, formed the programme for the painting of the period, and the period was such that the German painters themselves preferred to draw from the same source of inspiration. The disciples of Ruben—at least those who remained faithful to his age—did not contribute to the enrichment of Czech art. Historic Romanticism was for a long time to thwart the development of the painting of that period. Yet one must say in favour of Romanticism that it produced, towards the year 1850, an artist who, by the greatness of his talent, succeeded in rising above the level of the times. This was Josef Mánes, who has since become one of the pillars of true Czech and true modern art.
Even from an artistic point of view, 1848—the year of revolutions—accelerated the evolutionary process. Once more, but for the last time, Czech and German artists met as comrades, on the barricades.
