(b Choltice, 17 April 1807; d Prague, 23 Jan 1880). Bohemian painter. He studied at the Prague Academy of Fine Arts between 1824 and 1836 under Josef Bergler and Frantisek Waldherr (1748–1835). He then travelled abroad, living in Germany, Italy, Paris and London until 1840, when he returned to Prague. Hellich represents the academic trend in Czech patriotic art. One of the leaders of the movement among Bohemia’s artists for their rights in disputes with the Academy and other art institutions, he became president in 1848 of the shortlived but important Bohemian Association of Fine Artists opposing political and national oppression. Twenty years earlier, Hellich and Josef von Führich were two of the most prominent members in the circle of students that reacted against the eclectic classicism of the Prague Academy and sought a new religious and national art. One of the late expressions of this trend in Prague is the neo-Gothic reconstruction of the old St Luke’s Altar (c. 1850; Prague, Tyn Church) in which Hellich was the leading artist. He also played an important part in encouraging Czech art through his outstanding portraits, for example of the writer Bozena Nemcová (1845; Prague, Hradcany Castle) and of the historian Frantisek Palacky (1846; Prague, N. Mus.). Later in his career he concentrated on painting altarpieces. He excelled as a draughtsman—a discipline with its own tradition in Prague. Hellich helped to create a linear-plastic style of figural types that was considered a national one. Thus in the 1840s and 1850s he assisted in the stylistic development from Frantisek Tkadlík to Josef Mánes.