(Prague 1784–1843)
A Landscape with a Tree, verso titled on an old label of the Prague National Gallery (“Krajina s kosatym stromem”), with inventory number 01787, signed, dated A. Manes 1817, oil on panel, 40.5 x 50.5 cm, horizontal cracking, framed

Provenance:
Collection of Johann Bloch (1869-1940), Brno;
Forced donation to the Prague National Gallery, inv. no. 1778, in 1940;
Restitution to the legitimate heirs of Johann Bloch in 2023.

Catalogued in:
Eva Reitharová, Antonín Mánes, Prague 1967, p. 125, no. (Krajina s velkym stromem).

Literature:
Skřivánková E., Některé otázky hodnocení díla Antonína Mánesa, In: Umění IV, Praha 1956, p. 55.

Antonín Mánes is one of the most important representatives of Bohemian landscape painting of the 19th century. As a student of Karel Postl at the Prague Academy, he stands for the incipient autonomy of landscape painting and of it as an independent genre of painting. Later, as a professor of landscape painting, he had a great influence on the young talents, such as the Bohemian landscape painters Bedřich Havránek and Adolf Liehm. Moreover, he also intensively promoted the development of the painterly talents of his three children, of whom his son, Josef, became the greatest representative of 19th century Czech painting.

The present work shows an impressive engagement of Antonín Mánes with the works of Dutch landscape painting, as well as the romantic conception, which is also evident in other important paintings of the artist from the same year, such as some of those works with antique landscapes and with motifs of the Belvedere. As Eva Reiharová notes in her monograph on Mánes, rural subjects and comparatively small formats were clearly dearer to the painter's artistic sensibility. The present lot is one of the very rare examples of Mánes' artistic work, which not only shows high artistic quality, but also holds an interesting history running through several generations of art collectors.