(b Luzec nad Vltavou, 17 Nov 1875; d Prague, 2 Nov 1911). Czech painter, critic and writer. He studied at the Charles Ferdinand Czech University in Prague (1894–9) while at the same time studying painting at the Prague Academy of Fine Arts under Maximilián Pirner and Vojtech Hynais. He played an active part in the Mánes Union of Artists in which he later became a leading light. His earliest art criticism, which first appeared in Radikalní listy and more particularly in Volné smery, the organ of the Mánes Union, expressed his strong support of the modern point of view, for which he was obliged to leave the Academy before his final exams. In his critical views he was influenced above all by French modern art, and also by the theoretical approach that he had acquired from German Francophiles such as Julius Meier-Graefe. He was not only a modernist but was also interested in national and world traditions in art. He translated works by Eugène Fromentin and Maurice Barrès, and in his own book of essays, Dojmy a potulky, he stressed the importance of the artist’s direct experience of life and nature. As a painter, Jiránek was first influenced by Hynais’s Illusionism, and he subsequently became absorbed by French Impressionism. Most of all, he preferred to paint figures in the full natural light, as in White Study (1910; Prague, N.G.). In his later years Expressionist elements became more evident in his work, especially in his graphic art.

• Jiránek, Milos
  • Czech Republic, §IV, 3: Painting and graphic arts, after c 1900