Databáze uměleckých výstav v českých zemích 1820 – 1950

The competitions held at the end of the 1870s to decorate Prague's National Theatre were the first tenders for monumental public art in the Czech lands. The National Theatre's decorations were intended not only to adorn, but also to convey a range of concepts, from national self-determination to the competitiveness of Czech art on the international stage. Society therefore attached great importance to them. Due to the loss of several leading figures in the Czech art world at this time, these competitions primarily involved the emerging generation of artists.

The competition to design decorations for the National Theatre's main spaces was announced on April 15, 1877, with an original deadline for submissions set for May 1, 1878. Because some artists and jury members asked for an extension, the deadline was moved to January 1, 1879. The Committee for the Establishment of the National Theatre received many requests from artists for the competition conditions, indicating significant interest, including from artists working in Vienna, Munich, and Paris. Ultimately, however, only seven proposals were submitted: two for foyer decorations, two for the curtain and frieze above the proscenium, and one each for the connecting corridor, loggia, and auditorium ceiling.

The exhibition of designs likely opened on January 26, 1879 (press reports vary in this regard) in the Provisional Theatre. On February 2, it was moved to the Old Council Chamber of the Old Town Hall, where it remained until February 16. On February 7, the jury – whose members included artists Petr Maixner, Antonín Lhota, Soběslav H. Pinkas, Josef Zítek, Ludvík Šimek, Jan Swerts, František Sequens, and Friedrich Wachsmann, along with theorists Josef Durdík, Miroslav Tyrš, and Otakar Hostinský – decided on the awards and revealed the authors of most competition entries. Josef Tulka, as author of the loggia decoration proposal, won second prize, as did Emanuel Krescenc Liška, although his connecting corridor decoration project was not recommended for execution. First prize for the foyer design went to Mikoláš Aleš and František Ženíšek for their "Winged Palettes" project. The second foyer design by Adolf Liebscher did not receive second prize, but only an outstanding award of 1,000 guldens, because according to the jury it deviated too much from the assigned program – however, it was decided that the lunette designs would be used in modified form for the connecting corridor decoration. František Ženíšek received first prize for his design of eight ceiling panels for the auditorium. The two curtain proposals were deemed so unsuitable that the envelopes containing their authors' names were not even opened, and the committee decided to announce a new competition.

Most of the surviving designs in the collections of the Prague City Museum were executed in watercolor; only Adolf Liebscher's proposal was an oil painting on canvas. The technique used for the two curtain designs is unknown as both are missing. According to press reports, the exhibition occupied four rooms in the Provisional Theatre – the first contained designs for the loggia and the connecting corridor, the second and third housed foyer designs, and the fourth room displayed designs for the auditorium ceiling and curtain. None of the reviews commented on the placement of the works in the Old Town Hall. The Czech press published four articles about the exhibition. On January 31, two extensive reviews appeared in Politik and Národní listy. The Světozor magazine published a shorter text on February 7, containing mainly just descriptions of the exhibited works. The most extensive analysis of the designs came from Miroslav Tyrš in Osvěta. This text did not come out until the sixth issue of the journal in June, by which time the authors of the designs had already been identified. As a jury member, Tyrš wanted to appear objective, even though he had known the authors of most designs much earlier.

In addition to artistic quality, the committee used another key criterion to evaluate the designs: their Slavic or Czech character. However, there was only a vague mention of this in the competition guidelines. The paintings in the loggia were supposed to correspond with the sculptures on the theatre’s façade – namely the statues of Lumír and Záboj in the niches and Apollo with the Muses on the attic. For the foyer, the guidelines stipulated that "the motifs depicted here (should be) conceptually connected with theatrical activity in general and executed in the Slavic style. The ideas for these subjects can be drawn either from mythology, legends, history, national life, or from other suitable Slavic sources." [Dlábková 2006, p. 25] The only precise specifications concerned the connecting corridor. The cupolas were to depict Folk Song, National Dance, and Folk Tale as representatives of Slavic folk poetry, with adjacent lunettes further illustrating these themes.

The reviewers recognized that the artists were faced with an entirely new task. In his article for Národní listy, Jan Neruda expressed the prevailing concern that, after Josef Mánes's death, no artist in the older generation was worthy of the task and that the younger artists had yet to prove their skills. From this perspective, Neruda noted that the competition turned out better than expected. Although it was clear that the competition would not cover all the necessary work, it showed that local artists could handle the task. As Neruda wrote, help from abroad was out of the question, as it would have contradicted the requirement for a Czech character in the decoration. [Neruda 1879, p. 1]

Both Jan Neruda and the reviewer from the Politik followed the arrangement of the exhibition in their texts, first mentioning designs for the loggia and connecting corridor, continuing with projects for the foyer, and concluding with designs for the auditorium ceiling and curtain. Miroslav Tyrš, who could already name the artists in his review, began his text with E. K. Liška's and A. Liebscher's projects, which he considered to be the least Czech in character. He attributed the lack of “Czechness” to the artists' previous work and foreign training – Liška's in Munich and Liebscher's in Vienna. According to Tyrš, this negatively influenced their designs – for example, he criticized Liška's compositions, stating that "the Czech national song is not sentimentally Maxian, the Czech dance is not so conventionally lifeless, the Czech fairy tale is not some gloomy 'Saga.'" [Tyrš 1879, p. 500] Regarding Liebscher's neo-Baroque design, Tyrš wrote that the foyer ceiling "cannot be in the pigtail style [TN: a derogatory term for the Rococo] when everything else is 'modern Renaissance.'" [Tyrš 1879, p. 501]

All of the reviewers agreed that Josef Tulka's design for the loggia effectively incorporated the Slavic figural type. They particularly appreciated his Mánes-inspired approach. The foyer decoration project by Mikoláš Aleš and František Ženíšek received the most praise, with the critics emphasizing its formal and conceptual originality. Although Neruda and Tyrš noted minor imperfections, they applauded the overall conception. "After careful consideration, we can confidently say that we have not encountered such a high-quality conception in all of contemporary art. And we may add that it is not borrowed from anywhere; it is thoroughly ours, thoroughly Czech in every feature and in its entire artistic treatment." [Tyrš 1879, p. 506] Carried away by enthusiasm, Tyrš admitted that he and his friends were present when this design was completed, so he had known the authors of the project all along. Ženíšek's designs for the Arts on the auditorium ceiling also received positive evaluation, though Neruda surprisingly criticized the "poorly drawn music." [Neruda 1879, p. 1] The reviewers devoted almost no attention to the two curtain designs – Neruda summarized them with the observation about "the good will of earnest dilettantes," [Neruda 1879, p. 1] while Politik and Světozor briefly mentioned a design with the motto "Here is your seat for eternity," which was interesting from an artistic standpoint but unsatisfactory in content.

Besides reviews, the Prague press published brief reports about the exhibition, especially after the competition results were announced. The periodical Posel z Prahy reported that the exhibition was "visited by an exceptionally numerous and sophisticated audience and received universal approval." [Anonymous author 1879, p. 2] According to both Neruda and Tyrš, the competition provided convincing proof of the emerging artistic generation's ability to keep pace with contemporary European art.

Markéta Vondrová

Works Cited

Anonymous author 1879: Anonymous author, Národní divadlo, Posel z Prahy [XXIII], 1879, no. 25, 30. 1., p. 2

Dlábková 2006: Markéta Dlábková, Adolf Liebscher 1857–1919, diplomová práce FF UK, Praha 2006

Neruda 1879: J. N. [Jan Neruda], Výstava konkurujících malířských prací pro Národní divadlo, Národní listy XIX, 1879, 31. 1., p. 1

Tyrš 1879: Miroslav Tyrš, Rozhledy v umění výtvarném, Osvěta IX, 1879, no. 6, pp. 498–510

Further Reading

Anonymous author, Jednatelská zpráva výboru sboru pro zřízení českého národního divadla v Praze, Praha 1880

Naděžda Blažíčková-Horová, František Ženíšek (1849–1916), Praha 2005

Antonín Matějček, Národní divadlo a jeho výtvarníci, Praha 1954

Roman Prahl, The „Nation for Itself“ in the Curtain for the Czech National Theatre, Umění XLIV, 1996, pp. 520–536

Anonymous author, Výstava malířských konkurenčních prací, Čech XI, 1879, no. 21, 26.1., p. 3

Anonymous author, Preiszuerkennung, Bohemia LII, 1879, no. 39, 9. 2., p. 5

Anonymous author, Nationaltheater, Epoche [II], 1879, no. 38, 8. 2., p. 3

Anonymous author, Böhmisches Nationaltheater, Epoche [II], 1879, no. 48, 18. 2., p. 4

Anonymous author, Z ruchu uměleckého, Květy I, 1879, no. 2, pp. 383–384

Anonymous author, Národní divadlo, Národní listy XIX, 1879, 2. 2., p. 2

Anonymous author, Národní divadlo, Národní listy XIX, 1879, 16. 2., p. 3

Anonymous author, Národní divadlo, Posel z Prahy [XXIII], 1879, no. 25, 30. 1., p. 2

Anonymous author, Národní divadlo, Posel z Prahy [XXIII], 1879, no. 28, 2.2., p. 2

Anonymous author, Národní divadlo, Posel z Prahy [XXIII], 1879, no. 40, 16.2., p. 2

Anonymous author, Výstava, Světozor XIII, 1879, no. 7, p. 83