Village Waterfall

Josef Navrátil

Josef Navrátil - Village Waterfall
Waterfalls were a favourite motif of Romantic landscape painters. We find it fairly often in Navrátil’s work. Waterfalls may be seen in his murals - at Michalovic’s and later Vávra’s house in Prague (1847) and at the Jirny mansion (after 1850) - and in his oil paintings and gouaches. A similar composition as in this small painting may be seen in the mural A Waterfall below Dachstein at the Jirny mansion, where the figure of a fisherman is Navrátil’s self-portrait. This Village Waterfall was probably painted at about the same time as the mural - and the sitting painter is, once more, a self-portrait. The view of the closed, secluded rocky spot with a cottage on the cliff is in itself an artificial composition, yet some configurations of natural formations were painted from nature. The painting technique is subtle, the contrasts of colours delicate.
date:
measurements: height 31 cm
width 23 cm
material: oak wood
technique: oil
inscription:
inventory number: O 624
gallery collection: Collection of 19th Century Art and Classical Modernism