He was known both in the Paris art world and among the Montenegrins in the Balkans. GHMP commemorates the extraordinary story of Jaroslav Čermák

In 1858, he was living a comfortable life in Paris; he was just under thirty years old and had already achieved everything that most European painters of the time could only dream of. He exhibited at the prestigious Paris Salons, wealthy patrons were buying his paintings and he had before him a career that was open to only a handful of artists of his generation. Instead, he decided to travel to Dubrovnik and later to the Balkans, a region ravaged by war. He spent time among Montenegrins and Herzegovinians fighting against the Ottoman Empire and came to know their harsh way of life. He drew and sketched, was received at the Montenegrin princely court, and later transformed these experiences into monumental canvases in his Paris studio. His name was Jaroslav Čermák. Prague City Gallery, in collaboration with the National Gallery Prague, is now commemorating his extraordinary life with the first major retrospective in almost a century. The exhibition will be on display from 4 November at the GHMP Knihovna.