Two Women in the Field

Two Women in the Field was painted at a time when Čapek and his family regularly travelled to the town of Oravský Podzámok, Slovakia, on holiday, where he painted the local countryside, then largely untouched by modern civilisation. The painter focused on subjects including women with children, flower sellers, mountaineers by the fire, and rural people in the fields, in cowsheds or on paths, transforming these everyday inspirations into deeply existential scenes that emphasise fundamental human values. The motif of two women in the landscape is part of an extensive set of Čapek paintings dating from the 1930s and dealing with journeys and pilgrimages, which are closely connected to his philosophical prose work, The Limping Pilgrim, of 1936. Čapek again chose women as his main protagonists for their qualities as all-encompassing symbols of hope, love and sacrifice, and, when in pairs, friendship and trust. The figure in the red blouse and blue skirt with her back turned to the viewer also anticipates the artist’s final cycle of seated figures, titled Longing. With their dreamy, averted gaze, they would later offer a melancholy gesture to the despair of the nation and belief in a better future. The strength of the canvas lies in the dynamic lines of the surrounding fields, which follow the curve of the path leading to a red-roofed cottage, positioned as if the path will never reach it. The scene’s overall tension is further intensified by contrasting colours, especially in contact with black, which lends the entire scene a somber subtext. Even though Čapek was well-oriented in contemporary art and familiar with the current position of Surrealism, which he had responded to critically in the periodicals of the day, he consciously went against the grain of the Modernist movement, remaining faithful to principles of art inspired by children’s painting.

A small draft of this composition (Pair on a Path, pencil on paper, undated, 1930s) is preserved in the author’s estate and appears in the inventory under number I/3061 (P. Pečinková: Pracoval jsem mnoho, Soupis výtvarného díla Josefa Čapka, díl první: Kresba, Humpolec: 2019, p. 559). The work comes from the collection of the First Republic factory owner František Träger, who obtained it directly from the artist. Assessed in consultation with Prof. J. Zemina and PhDr. R. Michalová, Ph.D. The expert opinion of PhDr. P. Pečinková, CSc. is attached: “[...] As in his most significant prose, in these paintings Čapek captures the miraculous nature of everyday life situations and fleeting events as timeless moments, fragments of eternity. The image of a person or people on a path represents a general metaphor for human destiny, relating to philosophical questions concerning the relationship of being and time. […].”