Ars: časopis Ústavu Dejín Umenia Slovenskej Akadémie Vied (45.2012)

1. Galetti: L'oraisonfunèbre d’unpendu. Caricature of S obeslav Pinkas’s
painting exhibited at the 1861 Salon in Paris. Lepro: GALETTI:
Album caricatural. Paris 1861.

The relatively slow acceptance of bohemianism
by the Prague public is symbolisée! by the fact that a
Czech translation of the famous literary apotheosis
of this phenomenon, Henri Murger’s novel Scènes de
la vie de bohème (1851), was not published here until

1893, by which time bohemianism had become an
international cuit. In the interim, however, since the
1850s Czech artists and intellectuals had maintained
relations with France, motivated by both cultural and
political interests. Among Czech painters Soběslav
Pinkas embodied the graduai linking of Prague with
French bohemians and a general opposition to the
official scene. From 1854 to 1871 he was part of the
community of French artists and writers, and, report-
edly, he regularly met with Murger. He was one of the
Initiators of Czech-French relations who cultivated
the association of “bohemia” with “Bohemia”.* 2
Pinkas’s work was often at the very limits of what
was acceptable for the official art scenes in Prague
and Paris, and it was shown at the famous Salon des
refusés. In one painting Pinkas depicted a scene in
which his neighbour, a painter, had hanged himself.
This implicit protest against the conditions in which
artists struggled to survive was accepted by the of-
ficial Salon, as it belonged to a genre of paintings of
scenes from the lives of broader sections of society,
as well as being a small-format work. The painting
found its way into an album of sketches of the works
shown at the official Salon; the sketches often clan-
destinely promoted unconventional work among the
public [Fig. I].3 In Prague too it was a public secret
that bohemian artists were in a difficult position.
Many would-be artists with poorer artistic and social
skills saw their professional ambitions collapse. They
could easily end up joining the prolétariat, earning a
living in photographers’ studios for instance, where
they would retouch photographs by hand. Or they
might be entirely without gainful employment and
forced to rely on the solidarity displayed by their
fellow artists, as well as facing the disfavour of the

Tradition of Künstlerschaft. In: Nied^ica Seminars V. Polish
— Cyech — Slovák — dungarian Artistic Connections. Krakow 1991,
pp. 101-106.
2 In France Czechs were seen as one of the oppressed civilised
nations whose country had lost its independence. See e.g.
FRITZ, J. — LEGER, L.: La Bohême historique, pittoresque et lit-
téraire. Paris 1867. For basic information on Pinkas’s activities
in France, seeJIRÍK, F. X.: Soběslav Pinkas. Praha 1925. For
the most recent monograph on the artist, see BROŽOVÁ,
K.: S obeslav Pinkas, český malíř (1827— 1901) [Soběslav Pinkas,
Czech Painter (1827 — 1901)]. [Thés.] Charles University,
Faculty of Arts. Praha 2012.

For a more detailed commentary on Pinkas’s painting and
the canon of depictions of death in Czech art, and on how
suicide was depicted, see PRAHL, R.: „Vražda v domě“ jako
prohřešek. Jakub Schikaneder, kritika umění a širší i kupující
publikum [“Murder in the House” as an Offence. Jakub
Schikaneder, Art Criticism and the Broader and Art-Buying
Public]. In: PE1SERTOVÁ, L. - PETRBOK, V - RANDÁK,
J. (eds.): Zločin a trest v české kultuře 19. století. Sborník příspěvků
mezioborového symposia k problematice 19. století [Crime and Pu-
nishment in 19lh-Century Czech Culture. Proceedings from
an Interdisciplinary Symposium on the 19th Century]. Praha
2011, pp. 333-348.

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