Lot 33

Bedřich Havránek (1821 - 1899) ALPINE MOTIF

According to the expert opinion prepared by PhDr. Nadezda Blazicková-Horová, “Alpine Motif is an unquestionable and beautiful work by Bedrich Havránek from the 1840s. Already starting in 1840, while still a student of Antonin Mánes at the Prague Academy, Havránek and his father went on funded trips to the Bavarian lakes. At a painting colony on the islands in the Chiemsee in the Bavarian highlands that was sought out by landscape painters, he became acquainted with the Munich painter Max Haushofer, who came to Prague in late 1844/early 1845 to replace Mánes as the landscape painting professor at the Academy. Havránek came to his studio and under his influence, he continued to paint and exhibit one alpine motif after another at anniversary exhibitions in Prague. Today most of these paintings are missing, but drawing studies have been preserved for many of them. These studies show that Havránek’s Alpine Romanticism was dampened by a special descriptiveness he learned from Mánes, and the painting was made in the studio. It is typical of Havránek’s work that his emotional subjects were not always an exact depiction of the motif he saw. In his realistic views of select sites executed in great detail, he would rearrange the composition. This Alpine motif, a view of the right side of a river in the foreground of the composition, a castle on the higher rocky bank of the river, and a village in a valley below the mountains on the horizon, is impressive for its composition and color palette. Drama is added to scenery through the use of summer light and shadow, and he enlivens the scene with figurative staffage. Alpine Motif definitely is a beautiful and particularly successful work by Havránek featuring the subject of the Alpine landscape.”