Authors

Discussion

While historians have often worked with the assumption that culture determines experience, the relationship between culture and experience remains mostly unknown. This interconnection is at the core of this interdisciplinary research paper focused on three Bohemian female landscape painters whose careers span a period of growing interest in nature and landscape in Europe: Amalie Mánesová (1817-1883), Charlotte Weyrother-Mohr-Piepenhagen (1821–1902), and Zdenka Braunerová (1858–1934). Using a socio- and cultural-historical approach while also drawing on recent ecocritical developments in art history, this paper analyzes these three women’s lives and work, particularly Mánesová’s pictures of Hrubá Skála, Braunerová’s depiction of Roztoky, and Piepenhagen’s representation of Czech landscape compared to her alpine vistas. This study retraces their journeys as painters, and combines this biographical data with exhibition catalogues, critics’ reviews, and specialized as well as popular journal articles, to embed the production of “Czech” landscape both within the experience of the female representor and within contemporary concepts and ideas.

By investigating the ways that peers and laypeople considered Mánesová's, Piepenhagen's, and Braunerová's work, as well as the material dimension of their artistry, such as their artistic process or how markets and buyers shaped their choice of subject matter, we can shed some light on Czech environmental communications in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We can also deepen our understanding of the appeal of landscape, and address an important assumption in historical analysis. In the wake of recent debates about the marginalization of Central European academic voices in English-speaking historical debates, this paper also highlights often-overlooked Czech-language historical research, bringing enriching perspectives to the discussion.