Landscape with Kokořín and Křivoklát in Storm (Landscape in a Storm)

Mánes often criss-crossed Bohemia in search of interesting motifs, which he then either metamorphosed in the spirit of Romanticism or put on canvas with a pronounced dramatic charge. This large composition, sometimes also going under the title Landscape in the storm, presents a motif, which the painter used again and again in many variations. The landscape is made up of details - trees bending under the gust of a strong wind, castle ruins, a hermit near a chapel, a shepherd with his sheep. Yet the dominant feature is the overwhelming atmosphere and two kinds of illumination, essential for the somewhat mysterious mood of the picture - the foreground darkened by the storm is opening into a sun-lit second plane. Such attributes of Romantic paintings lent drama to landscapes, which had their literary equivalent in the works of the Czech poet Karel Hynek Mácha.