Company in the Country

Vojtěch Hynais lived in Paris between 1878 and 1893. The French metropolis was the leading art centre where an abundant number of Czech artists stayed back then. Although we fail to identify the figures in the painting, they must have been inspired by Hynais’s trips to Fontainebleau with his girlfriend and future wife Augusta Voirinová, painters Luděk Marold and Rudolf Vácha, and sisters Božena and Zdeňka Makovská, daughters of Karel Makovský, who ran an inn in Paris. Hynais painted the society resting in a sun-lit forest and entertaining themselves with crayfish catching, using a loose style and emphasising the depiction of light.