On 27 June 2026, an online auction of fifty Chinese ink paintings dating from the 18th to the 21st century will take place, united by one remarkable theme — all works come from private Czech collections assembled through direct contact with the Chinese art world.
The core of the auction comprises works from three collections with extraordinary histories. The first was built by Josef Hejzlar (1927–2012), a leading Czech sinologist and art historian who studied at Peking University and the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing from 1951 to 1956. Hejzlar acquired works directly from the artists with whom he maintained close personal friendships — from his professor Li Kuchan, from the celebrated Huang Yongyu, and from numerous other figures of the Beijing and Shanghai art scenes. The second collection was brought from China by Ing. Bernarda Bartáková, a Czech engineer who served in Shanghai, Beijing and Canton from 1955 to 1956 as a technical advisor for the construction of climate-control stations. The third collection was formed by Ota Výborný (1924–1994), an actor by original profession who in the 1950s studied at the drama faculty in Beijing, gained fame for his role as the British governor in the historical epic The Opium War (1959), and later became the first permanent correspondent of Czechoslovak Television in China. His position gave him access to personal friendships with a number of leading Chinese artists. All three collections have remained in the continuous possession of the collectors' families since their formation and are coming to market for the very first time.
The auction thus offers a rare opportunity to acquire works by first-rank Chinese masters with impeccable and fully documented provenance — from artists who gave or sold them directly to Czech sinologists, diplomats, journalists and technical specialists living in China in the 1950s.
Among the most significant lots is Candle and Mice by Qi Baishi (1864–1957) — one of the most iconic subjects in the late oeuvre of the most sought-after Chinese painter of the modern era. Dated 1948, when the master was eighty-eight years old, the painting depicts two mice on a bronze candlestick with a burning red candle, executed in his characteristic expressive xieyi style. The work comes from the Bartáková collection.
From the same collection comes Wild Goose over the Reeds by Lin Fengmian (1900–1991), the pioneer of modern Chinese painting and founder of the art academy in Hangzhou. Painted in his signature square format, the work is a masterful demonstration of Lin Fengmian's synthesis of the Chinese ink tradition with European Impressionism — one of the most compelling and sought-after types within his oeuvre.
From the Hejzlar collection, highlights include Quail and Millet by Li Kuchan (1899–1983), the first and foremost pupil of Qi Baishi, dedicated directly to Hejzlar in 1954 when Li Kuchan was his professor at the Beijing academy.
And Three Fish by Wang Qingfang (1900–1957), acquired by Hejzlar shortly before his departure from China in February 1956, accompanied by a unique printed book of poems in traditional Chinese thread-bound binding.
Special attention is due to a pair of paintings that meet in this auction as unexpected kindred spirits — both depicting sprawling, bearded men surrendering to blissful idleness with infectious abandon. The first is The Sleeper by Li Keran (1907–1989) from the Výborný collection: a fisherman asleep in a small boat among the reeds, a wicker lamp at his feet. The scene illustrates a poem by the Tang dynasty master Sikong Tu (c. 834–907): "Returning from fishing, I did not tie up my boat. Above the riverside village the moon is setting — I am truly drowsy. All night the wind blew, but not here, in the shallows among the blossoming reeds." Li Keran borrowed the verses from the golden age of Chinese classical poetry — he did not compose poems himself — and accompanied them with calligraphy of equally playful spirit. Based on comparison with similar works, the painting can be dated to the late 1940s.
The second is the monumental Airing the Books by Huang Yongyu (1924–2023) from the Hejzlar collection: a scholar — unmistakably the artist himself — sprawled on a bamboo daybed with a red teapot at his side, dedicated to Hejzlar in Beijing in the summer of 1987. Huang Yongyu here elaborates a jest on the theme of "airing the books he carries in his belly" — that is, his learning — lest they grow mouldy. The two paintings, created nearly forty years apart, share the same mood of affectionate humour and deliberately nonchalant virtuosity that only true masters of the brush could afford. Placed side by side, they testify to how deeply the ideal of the scholar who finds wisdom in leisure is rooted in the Chinese ink tradition.
A distinctive chapter of the auction is formed by several works by Jiří Straka (b. 1967), a contemporary Czech painter and sinologist who is one of the very few European artists to have achieved recognition in China working in the technique of traditional ink painting. A graduate in Sinology from Charles University in Prague and of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, Straka lives and works between Prague and Beijing, where he runs the art centre Czech China Contemporary and has served as a visiting professor at the Beijing academy since 2014. His works, exhibited at institutions ranging from Beijing's Today Art Museum to Prague's Rudolfinum and Museum Kampa, represent a unique fusion of the Chinese ink tradition with the Western visual language. Straka's presence in the auction symbolically completes an arc stretching from the Czech sinologists of the 1950s to today's living Czech-Chinese cultural dialogue.
The complete catalogue with scholarly entries for all fifty lots will be available online from 1 June 2026.