oil on canvas
circa 1900
lower right
65 × 100 cm
frame
Václav Radimský quickly became accustomed to the environment of France and around 1900 he had already fully established himself there as an artist. Rivers and their surroundings became an inexhaustible source of inspiration for him in all seasons, especially the River Seine and the River Epte, which flows into the Seine near Giverny. At that time, Radimský particularly liked to look for sunny areas with views of bodies of water and trees growing along the banks. He was especially interested in the reflection of the water surface with flickering lights and sun rays creating an ethereal atmosphere. It was precisely this kind of painting that he was sending to Bohemia at the time and thus introduced them and impressionism, above all, to art-loving society in Prague.The presented painting belongs to this kind and period. It is executed with confident dynamic strokes and in thick colour layers using a compositional scheme that was popular with the generation of young landscape painters from the so-called Mařák Landscape School at the Prague Academy. Depicted is an uninhabited part of countryside located on the border of a meadow and a tree-lined river. The same subject-matter appeared later in a number of the artist’s works from France as well as Bohemia. This painting also reflects a contemporary phenomenon, which can be found on numerous paintings by other Czech artists of that time such as Antonín Slavíček, Antonín Hudeček, Alois Kalvoda, and many others: an intensely focused insight into the forest interior with dominating bare trunks of mature trees whose treetops and often also roots disappear from the image. Assessed during consultations by prof. J. Zemina and Mgr. M. Dospěl, Ph.D. The expertise by Mgr. P. Kubík is attached.