oil on canvas
1930
lower left
34 × 80 cm
frame
This excellent, sensitively approached painting is a high-quality representative of the final period of Rudolf Kremlička’s work on a unique subject matter. Although the artist devoted his whole life mainly to figures, from the beginning of the 1920s, he was also intensively involved in landscape painting. During the following years, thanks to his original artistic expression inspired by the works of the Impressionists and the old Dutch masters, he created a new view of the Bohemian landscape. He liked to travel around his homeland to study different landscape terrains. He painted high mountains and deep forests as well as riverbanks. However, crucial for him became his stay in French Étretat and Brittany, where he spent perhaps the happiest moments of his life and whose panoramas were depicted on several of his canvases. Despite his distinctive painterly expression, often reflecting the neoclassical trends of French painting, it was at this time that the painter developed a balanced modern concept of realism. It is evident from the paintings how firmly he grasped the compositional experiment and captured the seaside scenery in a highly modern rendering. In the panoramic landscape of Étretat, Kremlička depicted with perceptible tenderness the quiet and breathtaking atmosphere on the coast near the famous rock arch Porte d’Aval, which became the destination of many painters already in the 19th century. In the left part of the picture, you can see the silhouette of the neo-Gothic Notre-Dame de la Garde chapel. The immense relaxed expression and the inexhaustibility of the subject matter show that in the last stage of his work, Kremlička reached the level of a high-quality painting not only in the context of Czech but also of world modern art. Assessed during consultations by prof. J. Zemina and PhDr. R. Michalová, Ph.D. The expertise of PhDr. K. Srp is attached.