Lot 276 | Václav Radimský | Summer Lanscape

RADIMSKÝ, VÁCLAV
Kolin 1867 - 1946

Title: Summer Lanscape.
Fruit trees by the creek.
Technique: Oil on card.
Measurement: 72 x 97,5cm.
Notation: Signed lower right: Radimsky.
Frame: Framed.

Provenance:
Private ownership, Slovenia, since 1915.

Václav Radimský brought Impressionism to Bohemia and the Czech Republic.

This simple phrase sums up the importance of this painter - and yet it does not capture the enthusiasm that this artist received from his contemporaries in his homeland and in his adopted country. Born in Kolin, he turned to painting directly after his secondary school years and, via a few detours in Munich and Vienna, very quickly found his way to the Ecole de Barbizon - and ultimately to the great Impressionists surrounding Pissarro and Monet. He developed an artistic and personal friendship with the latter in particular, so that he purchased a mill with a studio very close to the master near Giverny. Radimský did not imitate Claude Monet's style, but rather orientated himself on him and his conception of nature and light and thus found his very own pictorial language, to which he remained true throughout his life. He often wandered in nature and played with the effect of the incidence of light at different times of day or with the manifold reflections on the surface of water. His unique style of Impressionism soon made him famous and highly regarded, not only in his homeland, where he sends many of his works, but also in Paris, the whole of France and the European art centres, where he finds numerous enthusiastic buyers.

The first 13 years of the new century were certainly his artistic and economic peak - but this was abruptly ended by the outbreak of the First World War. Radimský has to serve in the Austro-Hungarian army, the wartime enemies of his adopted French homeland. He is arrested and only released after the intervention of the French Prime Minister. He then returns to his home in Kolin, where he remains until his death - disillusioned, but still very productive: he explores and paints the Elbe meadows there and is once again able to achieve some prosperity and success. In 2011, an exhibition in Prague on the occasion of the 65th anniversary of his death honoured his life's work and brought him back into focus. Since then at the latest, Radimský's masterful and colourful landscapes in the Czech Impressionist style have been sought after internationally.