prominence. He painted peasants at their labours, moments of rest or of noisy merriment, depicting his figures now in their working clothes, now in their Sunday best—masses of bright, crude colour flooded with light. Even when he throws these slices of real life on to a big canvas, he takes little heed of formal arrangement. Some traces of arrangement may be found in a few of his earliest works, such as “The Feast of St. Anthony” and his picture of village manners, “ The Procession of the Magi”; but the rest of his paintings show a freedom of rhythm thoroughly in keeping with an immediate record of things seen. Although he has studied his Slovakia under every aspect of season or time of day, his favourite hour is noon, when the red, yellow, blue and green hues of the costumes are ablaze in the summer sunshine, the contours of the landscape shimmer in a light-soaked atmosphere, and human features stand out in relief as clear-cut as on a medal. In Moravia, Uprka has become the leader of a group of painters who, under his guidance, profess an uncompromising regionalism, and have erected at Hodonín, the centre of their activities, a “Fine Arts Gallery,” with rooms for exhibitions.
It was at that time a creed with local artists that an uninterrupted stay in the heart of the country gave the artist an opportunity of discovering the soul of the ordinary people, and that his pallet would gain in richness of colouring by his observation of the variegated local costumes. Accordingly the painter Jaroslav Špillar went to the district of the Chods, in order to depict the glory of this courageous race, the vigilant guardian of the Bohemian frontiers, and it is for the same reason that Augustin Němejc sought his inspiration in the surroundings of Plzeň, among the peasants who, unfortunately, were gradually giving up their traditional national costume. Again, landscape-painters under the leadership of Kosárek and Chittussi, endeavoured to find some new expression
