Jaroslav Panuška, 1872-1958
Pond, around 1930
Oil on cardboard
Jaroslav Panuška ranks among the most famous students of Julius Mařák. Although he devoted himself mainly to landscape painting, he also went through a Symbolist period. Many surviving works of art by Panuška from this period demonstrate how the artist incorporated fantastic elements in the form of supernatural beings. Views of bodies of water – ponds, marshes and pools, shrouded in the haze of morning fog or moonlight – are characteristic of the landscape painting of his mature and late period. The painting, which entered the gallery’s collection in 1946 as part of property confiscated from the German population, depicts a pool and sky bathed in sunlight. In the composition, the painter tried to capture a fleeting moment, its specific atmosphere at the given moment, thereby moving towards Impressionist methods.
