the future of the Czechs. The Slav at last wakes up from melancholy to a joyful life.
M. Ales is a great poet amongst our artists. He draws old Slavonic heroes, dresses them and ornaments them with charms and implements and carvings. He is not a historian, but he dreams his poems so sincerely, and so fully is he immersed in his dreams that he carries us with him. Ales does not "draw" the public with wonderful and clever tricks of his palette or brush, but he who loves direct, simple art, the true Czech modesty of old times, and a pleasant and unaffected communicativeness, will find in Ales a pleasant, valuable companion. His art does not deceive; it is simple, honest, direct. The art of Ales is as simple as a national Czech melody. The decorative lunettes in the National Theatre in Prague were designed by Ales and Zenisek. They are monumental in the outlines of their figures, musical in the rythm of their poses; lyricism vibrates in them everywhere.
Zenisek's work shows an individuality very different from that of foreign masters. We shall learn more and more of his art, and no distant future will show very clearly how much Zenisek's art was a pure Czech art.
Zenisek is Slav, Czech, and where other painters love compositions full of heroic pathos, structural distribution of masses, effects of grouping, Zenisek is all delicacy. He places in space figures musically conceived, simple effects of lines and coloured masses. His allegorical figures are simple to understand; their symbolism flows, as it were, melodiously as a Slavonic song, richly
