Landscape with Kelso Abbey Ruins

Antonín Mánes is considered to be the founder of Czech landscape painting. During 1836–1843, he was the professor of the landscape school at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague and prepared his three children, Josef, Quido, and Amálie, for careers in painting. Landscape with Kelso Abbey Ruins was inspired by the popular poem Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard by Thomas Gray, translated into Czech by Josef Jungmann with the title Elegie na hrobkách veských. The view of the landscape with the abbey ruins is a symbolical reminder of ephemerality and death – memento mori; therefore, the painter placed his signature ‘Antonius Manes Bohemus’ on the tombstone.