View of the Vltava, Prague

By the mid-1930s Germany and Austria had both lost their democracies, and Czechoslovakia still had one, so Prague filled up with refugees from Vienna and Berlin. Friedl Dicker-Brandeis was one of them, and she painted this view of the Vltava around 1936. She looks at the river through a railing. A heavy rail and two posts run straight across the foreground, the ironwork of a bridge cuts in from the left, and the base of a pale tower closes off the right edge. In the middle lies a wide band of water in cool blue, green and brown. The outlines are loose and the paint goes on in soft, uneven layers, which keeps the view from turning severe. Far off there is just one person on the embankment and one small boat on the river.