to recognise in his work the traditional note of Josef Mánes, the charm of his round contours and the warmth of his inspiration. His feminine nudes, glowing with robust health, are verily of the same stock as the young peasant women of the Master.
Švabinský subsequently applied himself once more, with amazing industry, to his experiments in the various graphic arts. His attempts to represent a pair of lovers in the midst of a tropical forest resulted in a series of etchings with a thread of unity running through them, and entitled “Virgin Forest.” But he had already felt the attraction of wood-engraving, with its workmanship at once precise and solid. Accordingly he engraved on wood a large portrait of Josef Mánes, a portrait of himself, and a fine allegory of Summer, and started on the “Paradisiac Sonata,” a vast cycle of engravings in which his pair of lovers re-appears in the shade of the palm trees, giving themselves up to the happy, animal life of primitive mankind, in the company of wild beasts and butterflies.
In the generation of “Mánesists” Švabinský is one of the most powerful and original minds. Among his contemporaries he now holds the first place, and he is well-known abroad. William Ritter has devoted to him an enthusiastic article in L’Art et les Artistes.
The ranks of the Mánesists include no artist more intelligent than Miloš Jiránek. A man of wide culture, translator of de Musset and author of several monographs, he was perpetually exercised by problems of art, theoretical or practical. Thus he was always investigating, always making experiments. He tealized that impressionism had already reached the final stage of its evolution, and accordingly tried his hand at expressionism. But he did so entirely for his own satisfaction, as a fanatic for truth, almost as a moralist, and never to gratify the fashionable whims of the moment. Each new discovery in form or colouring
