Josef Syrový: A Czech Painter in Venice and Paris

She looks straight at us, dark-eyed, in a red blouse and green fringed shawl, a glazed yellow jug on her shoulder; behind her the lagoon, orange sails and a campanile. The paint is laid in short, thick, parallel strokes of pure colour that give the small board the glow of a mosaic. Josef Syrový (1879–1956) made his Paris reputation with pictures like this, and his Venetian Girl with a Water Jug is lot 6 of our Modern Masters: 20th Century Art sale.

Prague, San Marino, Munich, Paris

Syrový was born in Přerov nad Labem on 21 February 1879 and studied at the School of Applied Arts and the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague under Václav Brožík and Vojtěch Hynais. At twenty he left for Italy and lived for a time in San Marino, where he married the singer Lola Jelen; he studied in Munich from 1901 to 1903 and in 1911 settled in Paris, where he stayed for twenty-eight years, exhibiting at the Salon des Indépendants and the Salon d’Automne.

Venice and Brittany in mosaic

His best-known works are the Venetian genre pictures, water-carriers, girls with jugs, market scenes against the lagoon, and the Breton subjects: fishing boats, fishermen at work, women in coiffes. The technique is the same in both, short bright touches set side by side, a divisionism softened into decoration. Parisian critics singled out his Breton watercolours and his oils of Itteville and Montmartre. He first exhibited in Prague in 1928, returned there for good in 1939 and painted the Czech capital until his death on 22 August 1956.

Syrový in the sale rooms

His work surfaces mostly in the Czech auction houses, where the Paris-period oils are the most wanted, and occasionally in France. The Venetian boards are small, bright and immediately recognisable, which is why they rarely stay long on the market. More on his artist page.

At Aurora & Athena

Venetian Girl with a Water Jug, c. 1920s, oil on cardboard, 26.5 × 21.5 cm, framed, signed at the lower left, is offered on 17 October 2026 with an estimate of 600 – 800 €. Photographs, condition summary and bidding on the lot page.