Lot 40

Josef Navrátil (1798 - 1865) LANDSCAPE WITH A WATERFALL

From the expert opinion of PhDr. Naděžda Blažíčková-Horová: "The work comes from the collection of Pilsen Mayor JUDr. Matouš Mandl. The presented Landscape with a Waterfall is an unquestionably beautiful work by the painter Josef Navrátil, most likely from the period after 1850. At that time, in Navrátil’s oeuvre, oil-painted landscape scenes—already influenced by the Romanticism fashionable at the time—began to predominate over the gouache technique and Rococo sensibility. He constantly varied these as well, with such an astonishing wealth of invention and imagination that even the constant repetition and modification of themes did not diminish their artistic quality—perhaps because his primary inspiration for new interpretations was the extraordinarily striking and harmonious color palette. From the 1950s onward, in addition to Alpine reminiscences, Navrátil drew inspiration from his homeland, the Krkonoše Mountains and the Šumava. While traveling, much like other landscape painters of the time, Navrátil sketched exclusively and painted the resulting works only after returning to his studio. In doing so, he combined realistic landscape elements into an artificial and idealized, yet vivid, striking, and convincing natural backdrop."