Databáze uměleckých výstav v českých zemích 1820 – 1950

In the mid-1880s, a new private gallery appeared in Prague with an ambitious plan to create a permanent exhibition showcasing contemporary artistic output, preferably Czech. The gallery followed the lead of the successful Mikoláš Lehmann Gallery, which had represented artists since the early 1870s. 

The first references to the newly established Ruch Gallery emerged in the autumn of 1886. The first brief note came out in the periodical of the same name – Ruch – whose editor, Alois Wiesner, was also the gallery’s founder. The opening was originally announced for the second half of November and then for December 5, only to be further postponed to December 8, 1886, when the gallery finally presented its first show – a large painting exhibited in the main hall.

The single-painting concept drew on the successful exhibition of Václav Brožík’s paintings, which Alois Wiesner and František Brožík had organized several years earlier. For the opening of Ruch, Wiesner chose a large canvas by Julius Payer entitled The Gulf of Death, advertised in the press as “one of the most interesting and renowned works” [Anonymous author 1886]. The painting came to the Prague show after lengthy negotiations with the Paris-based art dealer Charles Sedelmeyer, who had already presented it two years earlier at an exhibition in Vienna. Under his supervision, the canvas was then to travel to Pest, Hungary.

The exhibition was a success, as the painting – sometimes called The Demise of Franklin’s Northern Expedition – depicted a popular topic. The famous expedition of John Franklin involving 138 crew members and two ships set out on its journey to the North Pole on May 19, 1845. Both ships got stuck in the ice, and none of the expedition members returned. Rescue parties from England and the United States came to the ships’ aid, but it was not until nine years after Franklin’s departure that the world received its first news of his fate. Over the next 32 years, 27 expeditions were sent to rescue the crew and, later on, to investigate the tragedy, gradually piecing together the famous explorer story. 

The public was fascinated by Franklin’s expedition, and its tragic fate resonated in the collective memory for decades. Julius Payer was so intrigued by the story that he decided to go on a similar journey. In 1872–1874, he joined the private expedition of Karl Weyprecht, who aimed, like John Franklin, to explore the North Pole. After his return, Payer began to paint, influenced by his new experience. He decided to depict the fate of Franklin’s expedition in a series of four paintings: The Death of Sir John Franklin, The Abandonment of the Ship, The Service in the Snow, and the final canvas, The Gulf of Death.

The exhibited work captures the death of the last living crew members at the place where rescuers found their remains several years later. Because the tragic end of Franklin’s expedition was well-researched and publicized and because of Payer’s personal experience in the Arctic, the painting came across as highly authentic. The painter aimed for maximum accuracy, giving his figures portrait features of the expedition participants. 

The choice of theme for the first exhibition at Ruch was not random; the organizers must have been aware of the public’s response to war paintings by the Russian-born artist Vasily Vereshchagin, exhibited in Prague a few months earlier. The critic Karel Boromejský Mádl mentioned Vereshchagin’s war scenes in his review of Julius Payer’s painting, thematizing what he called “the right of the corpse in art” [Mádl 1887, p. 15].

Although the response from both the public and critics was largely positive, with authors praising the topic and the overall impression, some reviewers criticized the painting’s technical execution. In his text, Mádl pointed out that Payer was a relatively inexperienced painter – before completing The Gulf of Death, Payer spent mere three years studying at the art academy, and so his brushwork “lacks the freedom and freshness that we like to see in painting" [Mádl 1887, p. 14]. 

Contemporary periodicals praised the show while also welcoming the emergence of the new private gallery that aimed to present the latest local and international art. Reviewers appreciated the choice of the gallery space – several rooms in the garden part of the Slavia Bank building on Senovážné Square. The rooms were modestly furnished and filled with a pleasant, diffused light that entered the space through skylights. 

In the context of the gallery’s overall conception, it is clear that this first show aimed primarily to draw attention to the new cultural spot in Prague and attract the art-going public so that it would come back for a cultural experience and ideally also to buy art. 

Lucie Česká

Works Cited

Anonymous author 1886: Anonymous author, Umělecká výstava vydavatelstva „Ruchu“, Ruch VIII, 1886, no. 31, 5. 11., p. 496

Mádl 1887: Karel Boromejský Mádl, Galerie Ruch, Ruch IX, 1887, no. 1, 5. 1., pp. 14–15

Further Reading

 Ondřej Chrobák, „Ruch“ ve výtvarném umění v Praze 80. letech 19. století (thesis), Praha 2002

Anonymous author, Umělecká výstava vydavatelstva „Ruchu“, Ruch VIII, 1886, no. 31, 5. 11., p. 496

Anonymous author, Galerie Ruch, Evanjelický církevník XVII, 1886, no. 11, p. 286

Anonymous author, Pan Alois Wiesner, Zlatá Praha III, 1885–1886, no. 52, 10. 12., p. 832

Anonymous author, Galerie „Ruch“, Národní listy XXVI, 1886, no. 350, 19. 12., p. 2

Anonymous author, Galerie Ruch, Národní listy XXVII, 1887, no. 1, 1. 1., p. 2

Anonymous author, Galerie Ruch, Národní listy XXVII, 1887, no. 5, 6. 1., p. 2

Anonymous author, Galerie „Ruch“, Národní listy XXVII, 1887, no. 10, 11. 1., p. 3

Anonymous author, Galerie Ruch, Národní listy XXVII, 1887, no. 15, 16. 1., p. 2

Anonymous author, Galerie „Ruch“, Národní listy XXVII, 1887, no. 15, 16. 1., p. 10