Near Rájec in Moravia

Havránek painted most of his monumental pictures of nature and synthesizing views of the Czech and Moravian landscape between the mid-1850s and early 1870s. Among the oldest and most remarkable paintings of this kind is this picture of the deep and almost dry sandstone bed of the subterranean river Punkva. The colour scheme and the rendering of the atmosphere of a late hot summer day is as masterly as the composition of natural formations shaped by an unfailing hand. The storm approaching from the far right is indicative of Havránek's Romantic leanings.