The Collection of 19th-c
Convent of St George
The Collection of 19th-c. Art transferred its permanent exhibition to the Convent of St George at Prague Castle, once the collection of Baroque art moved to the carefully restaured and reconstructed Schwarzenberg Palace.
It is an established truth that 19th-century art, as the art of every historical period, reflects not only the historic and social conditions of the time, but also its philosophical thought; it responds to the stimuli and conditions of the period, while accepting many ideas from the heritage and traditions of past ages. It is equally true that every new interpretation naturally reflects contemporary opinions and attitudes. In consequence our understanding of 19th-c.art is refreshingly new and different from that of past generations. Every new presentation of 19h-c.art should evoke our past in a way, which will be accepted and understood by our contemporaries as a refreshingly new and powerful experience.
That is the goal and purpose of the exhibition that is being opened today. The intention is to present all important 19th-c. trends in art and their chief representatives and to demonstrate how Czech art coped with contemporaneous European ideologicaland art tendencies. The collections of individual artists, mainstay of the exhibition, confirm that in its best representatives and in its specific way Czech 19th-c.art bears comparison with the art found in other European art centres. Perhaps just with a slight delay - the reason shouldl be sought in historical conditions and in the position of the lands of the Bohemian crown in the multinational Habsburg monarchy.
Under the impact of changing cultural, social and economic conditions art in Bohemia was since the late 18th century going through considerable transformations. Communication between artists and the public totally changed. With the onset of the 19th century literature, music, as well as architecture, sculpture, painting and decorative art began to express the desires, feelings and needs of the emerging middle class. Its businessmen grew rapidly rich - in its ranks were, however, not only entrepreneurs, but also representatives of the Czech intelligensia. In consequence the middle class was becoming the chief consumer and patron of the arts. The history of Czech art in the 19th century is thus also the history of 19th-c. Bohemian society.
To acquaint the visitors with the cultural climate in 19th-c. Bohemia and, more specifically, Prague, we have included in the exhibition not only paintings and sculptures, models and sketches of tombstones and monuments of personalities, who dominated the social and cultural life at the time, but also examples of decorative art. Paintings, sculptures and decorative art share similar attitudes, identical ideas and principles and thus bear testimony to the time and place of their origin, to contemporaneous society and the prevailing climate. Even for purely formal reasons the presence of sculptures and of decorative art is important for the exhibition: it highlights individual sections and helps fashion their spacial arrangement. Their role in the exhibition is twofold - on the one hand they are documents of prevailing trends in the development of art, on the other hand they serve as illustrations, e.g.portraits-busts.
The introductory part of the exhibition at the Convent of St George shows the links with late 18th-century art in Bohemia by comparing the work of Norbert Grund with that of František Xaver Procházka or of Christian Seckel with that of Ludvík Kohl. The exhibition ends with the generation born in the 1850s and 1860s, e.g. with the work of Beneš Knüpfer, Emanuel Krescenc Liška, Maxmilián Pirner or Jakub Schikaneder at the turn of the 19th and 20th century.
The exhibition follows the traditional chronological and thematic arrangement, to which was added a new element - sacred art. This was possible because the exhibition roms include a chapel, a perfect place for Myslbek's huge statues of Bohemian saints from the monument of St Wenceslas, which stands - cast in bronze - on Wenceslas Square. Visitors will also see there Emanuel Max's Crucified Christ. Actually, in the chapel motifs took precedence over chronology. Thanks to the dimensions of the convent rooms it was possible to display not only large sculptures, but also very manumental paintings, especially in the section of history painting.
