Toward the end of the forties, when Josef Mánes was laying the foundations for the modern Bohemian decorative arts, a man of talent appeared at the Prague Academy who, if not a pioneer, was at any rate a strong progressive spirit. His name was Jaroslav Čermák.
Čermák was born in Prague on August 7, 1831, and grew up in a strongly nationalistic atmosphere. His father was a physician, and Jaroslav’s brother John followed the same profession. John became an assistant at the Prague University of the famous scholar Professor Purkyně, and later was himself professor of physiology at various universities earning fame by important scientific discoveries. His mother’s maiden name was Veselá of Molitor’s man or near Kouřim, where the Bohemian patriots of those days were frequently guests. Jaroslav showed a talent for painting very early and so was sent in 1847 to the Prague Academy. He did not stay there long, but proceeded to foreign countries. Instead of going to Italy, as every budding artist did, he went to Belgium, for there Louis Gallait and others brought once more into great repute the art of the Netherlands. Čermák became a student at the Antwerp Academy and made such an impression by his talent and especially by his zeal on the master that Gallait broke his rule and took him for personal pupil. Čermák rapidly acquired the characteristics of his master’s art so completely that Gallait confided to him the execution of substantial parts of his paintings. But the student soon realized the weak points of the master, and when he settled permanently in Paris in 1852, he sought diligently to cure himself of various mannerisms of the Belgian school.
The young spark who had learned at home to move in society with assurance and grace made himself at home in Paris very soon. He had his box in the Grand Opera, went through a duel as champion of Richard Wagner, whose “Tannhauser” was then to be sung in Paris, dined with the author of “La Vie de Boheme”, Henry Murger, smuggled Victor Hugo’s writings from Jersey to Paris, shot gulls on the coast of Normandy, and painted now at Paris, now among the rocks of Bretagne. He was a muscular young fellow of sparkling eyes and dark locks, slightly limping as a result of a painful disease with which he had been afflicted when he was sixteen. Naturally he was popular in Paris. But strange to say, his entire Paris period, 1852 to 1860, was devoted to painting scenes from the past of Bohemia. For the annual publication of the Union of Decorative Artists he painted “The Bohemian Mission in Basle”, portraying the spiritual leaders of medieval Europe as they looked with mixed feelings at Procopius the Great, Rokycana and the other Hussites who had made all Europe tremble. He also engraved “Přemysl Otokar II. before the Battle on Moravian Field”, “Žižka and Procopius reading the Scriptures on War Chariot”, “The Taborites Defending Sunken Road”, “Šimon of Lomnice begging on the Prague Bridge”, and “Counter-Reformation”, a painting that received the great golden medal in Brussels in 1854. But suddenly new interests, a new enthusiasm captured him, the Slavic South.
From the year 1860 on Čermák frequently made trips with Mrs. Gallait and her two little daughters into southern Dalmatia. In Ragusa Čermák had a friend, Meda Pučič, a Croatian author, and through him Čermák came into touch with the borderland of the heroic Montenegro. From Mandalina south of Ragusa, where Čermák established a home for the Gallaits and for himself, he made short trips into the mountains, causing himself to be suspected for a dangerous Pan-Slav agitator. What he saw there gave rise to a whole series of paintings, a veritable apotheosis of the Slavic South. But though Čermák was overflowing with enthusiasm, he had a strong feeling for truth and reality, and so his heroic visions do not lose contact with facts. As Mánes created an idealized Czech type, Čermák created his own South Slav ideal of beauty, and everyone who has seen his “Herzegovinian Girls with Horses at the Spring”, “Montenegrin Girl”, “War Booty” (sue girls guarded by two Albanians) , or “Blind Bard and Daughter”, will never forget these wonderful beauties. Even though the girl from Herzegovina is not to be found
