with an extraordinarily lyrical temperament, he rendered landscape in terms of musical psychology, and it was as a musician that he composed cycles, in oils or in charcoal, of which “The Seasons,” “The Hours,” “Woodland Characteristics” are the best-known. By his scrupulous attention to reality he ushered in a healthier romanticism, one purged of all mawkish sentiment. Faithful observation of Nature and a sound mastery of form provide a solid basis for Mařák’s poetic conceptions. It was characteristic of the man that he expressed himself by the intensity rather than by the quality of his colour. A kind of chiaroscuro was the result, and this tendency led him even to substitute the charcoal-stick for the brush. With this technique he achieved some quite considerable work, like the famous cycle of “Woodland Characteristics.” But after all, Mařák’s chief claim to distinction lies in the wholesome influence which, as a teacher, he exerted on the succeeding generation. Profiting by his guidance, they all threw in their lot with the great Western tradition, and created for Bohemia her modern school of landscape painting.
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Side by side with this more and more marked occidental trend of Czech art after 1848, the tradition of decorative painting inaugurated by Josef Mánes was carried on. In 1879, the seeds sown by the generous hand of that great artist were at last destined to yield harvest. The competition arranged in connexion with the pictorial decoration of the Prague National Theatre, which had just been built, produced the first results. Two young painters, as yet almost unknown, Mikuláš Aleš and František Ženíšek, won the first prize in that year for the decoration of the foyer, thanks to their joint series of wall-paintings entitled, “Our Native Land.” It could be seen at a glance that the young artists were
