exhibitions of his work have been held. After living for ten years in Paris he settled once more in Prague, where he often reverted to the brush, turning to account many an impression he had received in Paris, resuming his idealistic composition and painting portraits.
It is in Paris, too, that Karel Špillar learnt to enjoy and record the sensations that he gathered at the theatres and music halls of the capital or at the seaside, transposing every impression into a gentler, more intimate key. The slender grace of the Parisienne in particular caught his fancy. Returning to his native land, he practised idealistic composition after the Arcadian manner of Jan Preisler. In the same way Hugo Boettinger, having come under impressionist influence in Paris, recovered his visions of youthful nudes living in perfect harmony with the beautiful scenery where their innocent gambols take place. It seems a paradox to remark that this dreamer is a gifted caricaturist. In his caricatures, he becomes an unflinching realist, lightly emphasising this or that feature, this or that peculiarity of his subject, but never dropping the very human attitude of a kindly humourist.
A younger man than these, the portrait painter Vratislav Nechleba rapidly acquired an extraordinary skill in brushwork and a popularity uncommon for a beginner. In his numerous portraits he revived the ideal of the old masters, their values and their chiaroscuro, yet without abandoning his own point of view as a staunch and consistent realist. Another very popular artist, Jakub Obrovský, has a sensuous love of colour, and mingles opulent female nudes, gay-hued draperies and luxuriant plant life in compositions which assault the eye with their violent decorative rhythm. Among the engravers, we may mention Vladimír Silovský, a pupil of Švabinský, whose graving-tool accurately seizes the special atmosphere
