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Pinkas, (Hippolyt) Sobeslav
(b Prague, 7 Sept 1827; d Prague, 30 Dec 1901). Bohemian painter, caricaturist, designer and administrator. He was the son of the liberal politician Anton Maria Pinkas and the son-in-law of the art historian Anton Springer. In 1849 he began his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts (Akademie Vytvarnych Umení) in Prague, where in the previous year he had belonged to a group of students who were leaders in supporting the democratic revolution. In 1850 he continued his studies in Munich with Johann Berdellé (1813–76). Children Playing on Kampa Peninsula in Prague (Prague, N.G., Convent of St Agnes), exhibited in Prague in 1854, was a demonstration of unpretentious realism and the artist’s interest in contemporary life. In 1854 he went to France, where he remained until 1869. Thus he, rather than his friend and fellow artist Jaroslav Cermák, became the first Bohemian painter to spend considerable time in contact with the work of contemporary French artists who did not enjoy official recognition. Initially he studied under Thomas Couture but was later influenced by Courbet and Jean-François Millet. He was associated with the Realists of the Barbizon school and lived mostly in the villages of Marlotte and Cernay-la-Ville in the Forest of Fontainebleau. Workers on Montmartre (1859; Prague, N.G., Convent of St Agnes) belongs, both thematically and by its range of colour, to the first manifestations of modern Realism in Bohemian art. The Old Man and Death (Prague, N.G., Convent of St Agnes) was exhibited in 1863 at the Salon des Refusés in Paris. From this period his genre paintings, landscapes, still-lifes and some applied art designs have survived. After his return to Prague in 1869 he produced work almost exclusively for his family and friends. From 1877 to 1885 he was active in ARTISTIC FORUM as chairman of the Department of Art and chairman of the union. He was a member of other cultural committees and he took part in the development of such cultural links between Bohemia and France as the Alliance Française de Prague, of which he was the founder. He was also a caricaturist, producing illustrations for the first political tabloid published in the Czech language.
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