Databáze uměleckých výstav v českých zemích 1820 – 1950

The first edition of the Prague annual exhibition was organized in 1836 by the Krasoumná jednota (Fine Arts Association), an organ of the Society of Patriotic Friends of Fine Arts (SVPU) established specifically for this purpose. From the beginning, the annual exhibitions were associated with the Prague Academy (also run on the initiative of the SVPU) because they primarily showcased prize-winning works by the Academy’s students. This gradually changed as the exhibitions opened their halls to artists outside the Academy. In 1840, the annual show underwent numerous changes due to the generational turnover of the SVPU committee [Sternberg 2017, pp. 33–35]. New SVPU statutes were issued in 1839, followed by a push for changes in the domestic art world, namely in artistic training and organization of art exhibitions.

The 1840 exhibition reflected these changes in the increased number of participating international artists. In addition, the newly arranged catalogue was more visitor friendly, allowing for better orientation in the artists’ origin, the material and technique of the exhibited artworks, and particularly the prices of items for sale. The catalogue, designed as a well-organized table separating oil paintings and original drawings, prints, and sculptures, also indicated the artist’s name and place of residence, along with the title and the price of the artworks (or the private owner’s name in the case of works that were not for sale). Compared to the previous year, the scope of the exhibition increased by a third (274 exhibits compared to 180). Reviewers praised the organizers for including high-quality artworks from Munich, Düsseldorf, Berlin, and Dresden. The significant representation of foreign artists was defended in the press as a necessary step on the part of the SVPU committee, meant to stimulate the development of the domestic art scene. Commentators repeatedly emphasized that international participation increased the show’s prestige and helped Czech artists stand their ground in the international competition by absorbing new trends and finding new sources of inspiration for their work [Müller 1840; Stolz 1840, no. 45, p. 215]. The SVPU committee also planned to use the proceeds from the exhibition to support study trips for Academy students.

Because of the large number of artworks on display, the exhibition had to move: the Academy’s spaces in the Klementinum no longer met the requirements for exhibiting, so the show took place in the Colloredo Mansfeld Palace that year. The salon on the second floor supposedly offered larger spaces and better light [Z. 1840A]. Even so, all the paintings were not completely visible, and the organizers contemplated the option that in the future, the installation would be regularly rearranged [Stolz 1840, no. 48, p. 231]. In the following decades, the annual show changed its venue several times until the Rudolfinum was built and opened for exhibitions in 1885.

Although press statements about the unprecedented quality of the current show and the public’s extraordinary interest reappeared to some extent every year, it is clear that after 1839, the events surrounding the annual exhibition in Prague intensified. Approximately 300 persons came to the opening in 1840 and the organizers expected large attendance, warning spectators against leaving their visit for the last moment as the spaces got overcrowded toward the end of the show. Ticket and catalogue sales exceeded those of the previous years [Müller 1840]. Many artworks found their buyers in the first days of the exhibition, including the paintings that later served as Krasoumná jednota’s premiums (24 canvases were offered to the association’s members in a raffle organized after the end of the exhibition in the Academy’s building on June 1). Moreover, the Krasoumná jednota sold 14 of its shares, testifying, according to reviewers, to the public’s lively interest in the latest developments in the art sphere. The organizers added new artworks throughout the show; for example, critics welcomed a painting by Josef Führich, shipped from Vienna (Joseph and Mary Looking for a Shelter on the Way to Bethlehem) and other paintings from Antwerp, Amsterdam, and Paris that arrived around mid-May. Typically of the period, history paintings were a minority at the exhibition, outnumbered by portraits (about a third of the total), landscapes, genre paintings, and still lifes (there were two of them), all fashionable genres at the time, which usually came in smaller formats. The growing interest in landscape and genre painting found its reflection in theoretical observations about these two painterly disciplines published as part of the exhibition reviews by Anton Müller and Bernhard Stolz. These texts represent the beginnings of modern critical thought on landscape and genre painting in Prague [Z. 1840b, no. 72; Stolz 1840, no. 48 and 52]. 

The collections of foreign schools naturally attracted critical attention. The Düsseldorf painters sent several prominent large-scale figural paintings (Zimmermann, Meyer, Plüdermann), including the large canvas Norwegian landscape (Achenbach), which Prince Kamil Rohan purchased from the exhibition for his collection, as well as genre paintings. In addition to technique, critics emphasized extraordinary aesthetic appeal and poetic quality of these works, rendered with convincing realism, typical of genre painting. The most discussed artworks included four architectural views by Wilhelm Gail from Munich and two seascapes from Berlin, while the Dresden collection received less attention than in previous years. Carl Hasenpflug, a fashionable painter from Halberstadt, sent a painting of a snow-covered monastery courtyard (The Snowy Cemetery), which became a sensation among the exhibited landscapes, and which Prince Rohan purchased for his collection along with the landscape by Achenbach. The painting of Albrecht Dürer drawing children, sent from Paris by the painter Jakob, also attracted the reviewers’ attention. The artworks, which arrived from Rome, included works by the Czech expatriate Leopold Pollak and the German painter Carl Vogel von Vogelstein, both of whom sent genre paintings with folkloric subject matters; in Vogel’s case, in particular, the reviewer pointed out the ethnographic and documentary accuracy.  

Given the disputes between the new, cosmopolitan-oriented SVPU leadership and the relatively large group of local artists who had been struggling to create their own organization since the early 1930s, it is not surprising that the tone in some of the reviews is rather critical, pointing to the supposedly limited outlook of local artists and their lack of assertiveness and competitiveness, and the obsolescence of their style and practices. In contrast, pro-Czech reviewers cautiously praised the performances of the locals. The Czech figurative painters at the exhibition included particularly František Tkadlík, the former director of the Academy, who died in January of that year. He had four paintings at the show, with Death of Abel causing the most excitement – Tkadlík never exhibited it during his lifetime, and the painting only emerged after his death “as a discarded and forgotten treasure” [Z. 1840b, no. 65]. In contrast to the consensual tone of the Bohemia review, the commentary in Ost und West evaluated Tkadlík as a “faded talent,” producing a mere mixture of classicism and the Old German school. This critique also voiced an explicit request to entrust the leadership of the Academy to a person of liberal orientation and with an insight into contemporary art [Stolz 1840, no. 52]. Regarding the living domestic figurative painters, critics placed the greatest hope in Josef Hellich and Gustav Kratzmann. In their reviews, they compared these artists’ painting methods and expressed their wish that the unity of composition characterizing Hellich’s work combined with Kratzmann’s interest in detail [Z. 1840b, no. 65]. Josef Mánes and Leopold Pollak also received praise [Stolz 1840, no. 52]. 

Much critical attention focused on the landscape painter Antonín Mánes, who headed the landscape studio until the following year but whose position within the Academy was gradually and purposefully weakened [Petrasová - Machalíková 2022, p. 35]. Reviewers of the 1840 exhibition criticized his ideal landscapes (Italian Landscape and The Tempest) for their unlikely combination of Italian scenery with Nordic light, as well as for their over-reliance on and copying of models – this was, according to the reviewers, superficial and soulless [Stolz 1840, no. 52]. However, typically in the period when realist tendencies in landscape painting were on the rise, Mánes’s views of the Czech landscape received praise for their “portrait-like” faithfulness. Citing Mánes’s works as an example, the reviewers advised all landscape painters to study nature [Z. 1840b, no. 72] so they would avoid lifeless copying [Stolz 1840, no. 52]. 

The tone of the reviews in Bohemia and Ost und West betrays the authors’ purposeful support for the current SVPU committee, whose aim in the following years was to innovate the academic system in Prague and the presentation of its outputs. As this was quite a radical undertaking, its promoters faced criticism from the representatives of the local art world, who had been in opposition against the SVPU since the 1830s and whose leaders included Antonín Mánes as a member of a prominent Prague artistic family. The early-1840s journalism allows us to observe how authors defended and supported the rejuvenated and active SVPU committee and how the criticism of some phenomena and persons in the local art world gradually escalated.

 Pavla Machalíková

Works Cited

Petrasová – Machalíková 2022: Taťána Petrasová – Pavla Machalíková, Dílo a proměna umělecké scény: studie z vystavování v Čechách 19. století (kat. výst.), Plzeň 2022

Sternberg 2017: Caroline Sternberg, Kunstakademie und kulturelle Modernisierung. Die Geschichte der Prager Kunstakademie im Zeitraum 1840–1874, Regensburg 2017

Stolz 1840: Bernhard Stolz, Bemerkungen zu der akademischen Kunstausstellung in Prag, 1840, Ost und West V (supplement of Prag), no. 45, 3. 6., p. 215; no. 47, 10. 6., p. 227; no. 48, 13. 6., p. 231; no. 51, 24. 6., p. 243; no. 52, 27. 6., p. 251

Müller 1840: A. M. [Anton Müller], Noch ein Wort über die akademische Kunstausstellung d. J. 1840, Bohemia XIII, 1840, no. 92, 2. 8., p. 4

Z. 1840a: Z., Die Kunstausstellung, Bohemia XIII, 1840, no. 48, 21. 4., p. 4

Z. 1840b: [Z.], Die akademische Kunstausstellung vom Jahre 1840, Bohemia XIII, 1840, no. 49, 24. 4., p. 4; no. 51, 28. 4., pp. 3–4; 52, 1. 5., pp. 3–4; 54, 5. 5., p. 4; no. 55, 8. 5., p. 4; no. 57, 12. 5., p. 4; no. 61, 22. 5., p. 4; no. 63, 26. 5., p. 4; no. 64, 29. 5., p. 4; no. 65., 31. 5., p. 4; no. 67, 5. 6., p. 4; no. 72, 16. 6., p. 4

Archival Sources 
Archive of the National Gallery in Prague, fonds SVPU

J[ohann] Ritter von Rittersberg, Kunst-Anzeige, Prager Zeitung XVI, 1840, no. 82, 24. 5., p. 4

J[ohann] Ritter von Rittersberg, Kunstanzeige, Prager Zeitung XVI, 1840, no. 85, 29. 5., p. 3

Z., Die Kunstausstellung, Bohemia XIII, 1840, no. 48, 21. 4., p. 4