Hudeček Antonín (1872–1941)

Autumn Mood, before 1900 – double-sided painting

oil, pasteboard, frame
66.5 x 80 cm
sign. PD tužkou AH...


valuation price 400 000-500 000 CZK. Attached expert opinion by PhDr. Michael Zachař. Lit.: Karlíková Ludmila: Antonín Hudeček. Odeon 1983, see p. 25. The painting Autumn Mood by Antonín Hudeček belongs to a group of paintings originating from between 1898–1900, in which Hudeček portrayed the landscape in the environs of Okoř. Poetic landscapes with foggy mist fall into the class of European moody landscaping, developing mainly in Germany and the Slavonic countries as a variant of contemporary French impressionism. It enriched the beginnings of modern art with an endeavour to express the poetry of the countryside. This rare early painting is one of the takes on the work of the same name from 1900, which is found in the permanent collections of the National Gallery. From the opinion: The academy-trained painter Antonín Hudeček (1872–1941) is one of the leading proponents of Czech landscape painting at the turn of the 19th and 20th century and is usually mentioned in the majority of foreign publications about Czech impressionism and Art Nouveau. Together with Antonín Slavíček and Jan Preisler he created sophisticated composed paintings based on small and larger studies in the open air. A favourite place for painting directly in the countryside was, for Slavíček and Hudeček, a site near Prague – the hamlet of Okoř with a castle ruin, a pond and a meandering stream, forming charming still-lifes among the trees. It was a place for special landscape painting courses led by professor Julius Mařák attended in 1897 by Hudeček himself, who painted, applying a light brush, a number of fresh studies mainly in the syntonos technique, which was a popular tempera in that period produced in the Beckmann factory in Berlin. In 1898, using the studies he created larger oil canvases displayed and published at exhibitions of the Mánes association. In the 1898–1899 period Hudeček’s interest shifted from figurative themes to open landscapes, often working in the open air, while the paintings attained more supple colours. Until 1906 he irregularly returned to Okoř and in the winter months he created large paintings in the studio evoking indigenous atmospheric moods. The Okoř period was one of the high points of the painter’s work and is the one most in demand by collectors.