Jakub Schikaneder was one of the most important artists of the late 19th century and the turn of the century in Prague. From 1871-79, he studied at the art academies in Prague and Munich in the class of Gabriel von Max, whose historicist figure compositions had a formative influence. Schikaneder's beginnings are characterized by a narrative Realism of a naturalistic nature, in which he addressed the living conditions of the poor. Similar to the French artists of Realism, he often put focus on individual figures shown both in their individuality and as symbols of a class or the general human struggle for existence, tinged with a quiet melancholy. In doing so, he turned away from history painting, and at the same time from euphemistic academic genre painting, as well as from impressionistic depiction detached from any social claims. His figures are often female, as if one would expect a greater depth of feeling and empathy in them. Often incidental scenes of human life, peeling potatoes, gathering herbs or in church, show a harsh reality that to some point is still characterized by a notion of a fundamental trust in life. Some works show a certain proximity to Van Gogh's social studies of the time and Dutch realistic painting of the 19th century, which are also characterized by dark colors. Schikaneder's interest in symbolic forms of expression becomes most evident in his depictions of women in his works of the 1880s. At this time, Parisian culture in Europe in particular was turning to the images and fates of women in modern civilization as the most prominent theme of modernity. His work, which initially oscillated between allegory and testimony, between classicist academicism and modern, socially oriented Naturalism, became the most significant attempt at a pictorial expression of the tendencies of Realism and Naturalism in the Czech cultural environment in the late 1880s. [KT]