Blest. They were creatures of a poor soil, his own native soil, young people of little beauty, grim-visaged, spare of frame, but with the intense fire of the visionary burning in their eyes. Although formed by Ženíšek and a marvellous draughtsman, Preisler seemed to have no feeling for beauty of form. For him perfect form was the expression that fully and flawlessly bodied forth the painter’s aim, even at the cost of a certain stiffness and lack of freedom. Hence he resisted the lure of the beautiful line, and, although colour had no secrets for him, did not even let himself be beguiled by its exclusive spell. Gradually, however, a change was wrought in his outlook. The Czech countryside became a dream-landscape, and its inhabitants were transformed into ideal types of humanity. Preisler even lost for a time the happy balance of his youth. He had set himself to seek a new language in which to translate his visions of Arcady. He used his colours daringly, even brutally, and drew near to the French innovators of the period. He painted pictures where, in a mad whirl of pure colours, there appeared an unknown yet living country, peopled with fair nude figures. Preisler had become a pantheist poet, intoxicated with the illimitable life of the universe.
The sobering down came in 1910, with a big order, the decoration of a reception room in the Prague City Hall, which had just been built. All that he had acquired during previous years was here summed up and harmonized in accordance with the best principles of painting for public buildings. Here are groups of lovely dream-figures, linked by a powerful rhythm that sings in resonant tones what the easel-pictures could but murmur softly—the cosmic harmony, the mysterious bonds between worlds, beauty and joy of living. When these decorations were finished, Preisler worked in retirement, no longer sending anything to exhibitions, but entirely absorbed in the quest of the
