Daisies in Vase

While Josef Čapek mostly focused on human subjects in his paintings dating from the 1920, he also occasionally produced lyrical still lifes and floral motifs in a softened colour palette. At the same time, he used a quite wide spectrum of styles, ranging from naïve art through echoes of Cubism to spontaneous, elemental brushwork. This fine, poetically pure composition is one of these artistic experiments and depicts a bouquet of white daisies in a simple clay vase set against a neutral background of warm, light browns. This flower was one of Čapek’s favourites and is first documented in a painting dating from around 1914. In the listed painting, Čapek masterfully combined gently modelled flowers with expressive, dense brushstrokes in the background and on the vase, thus achieving a remarkable contrast between the delicacy of the flowers and the robustness of the vessel. Daisies in Vase carries the subtle melancholy and timeless simplicity that are characteristic of the artist, emitting the calm intimacy and quiet pleasure of the “humblest art” and seeking an artistic language that corresponded to the notion of modern painting liberated from its descriptive function.

The work comes from the collection of the First Republic factory owner František Trägner, who obtained it from the artist. Assessed in consultation with Prof. J. Zemina and PhDr. K. Srp. The expert opinion of PhDr. P. Pečinková, CSc. is attached: “[...] The spontaneous brushwork and ascetic earth colours are typical of the 1923–1924 period, when a new style era, known as the ‘Boys’ period, begins in Čapek’s painting. ‘I painted a lot of paintings, quite free things, not so strictly formal as before, when I think I was too restrained and didn’t express myself enough as a painter,’ Čapek confided to Bohuslav Reynek at the time. This freeing of painterly expressivity also characterises the listed work.”