Sketch from the Street

Vojtěch Bartoněk's 'Sketch from the Street' (1887) is an urban genre subject — the street sketch as the most direct form of naturalist observation, the figures and activities of the street captured with the immediacy of direct observation rather than studio composition. The street sketch tradition connecting to Daumier's caricature studies and the Impressionists' café subjects represented the naturalist commitment to depicting contemporary life without the conventions of academic arrangement. Bartoněk's Czech street subjects brought this international methodology to the specific social world of Prague or his other working locations.

Bartoněk renders the street subject with the immediacy and economy of the sketch format — figures, social interactions, and the street's material culture captured with the directness of rapid observation rather than labored studio composition. His technique in sketch subjects shows the loose, confident handling that plein air and sketch practice demanded, the essential character of the observed scene captured without the finishes of exhibition work.