Mountain Landscape with a Lake

Josef Navrátil

Josef Navrátil - Mountain Landscape with a Lake
Navrátil’s specialty were small−sized gouache paintings of Alpine motifs that soon became very popular among collectors. These works document not only his skills in composing visually impressive landscape settings, but above all the pure, painterly character of his oeuvre. The Alps were a highly sought−after source of inspiration for painters of the Biedermeier and Romantic periods. Navrátil visited the mountains for the first time in 1843. During his travels he made lively pencil drawings and only later, in the peace of his studio, he used these sketches to re−arrange the individual motifs into finished compositions. In the Mountainous Landscape with a Lake he worked with the contrast between the smooth, dark body of water and the sun−lit mountain peaks. In his treatment of light and shade, through which he expressed the scene’s overall atmosphere, Navrátil looked byck to the tradition of Rococo colouristic painting represented in Bohemia especially by the work of Norbert Grund.
date:
measurements: height 430 mm
width 538 mm
in collections:
material: paper
technique: gouache
inventory number: K 1703
gallery collection: Collection of Prints and Drawings