Georg Emanuel Opiz

Unframed. The sheet is in generally good condition. The extreme edges have been reinforced with a small strip of paper. There is some minor stainign along the top edge recto. The picture surface is in generally good condition aside from a few very minor scattered spots of loss in figures in the crowd. There are some small areas of flaking and loss along the extreme edges.
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Georg Emanuel Opiz (born Prague, 1775) painted vivid scenes of city life during and after the Napoleonic wars. As an astute observer of cultural exchange, Opiz is often remembered for his scenes of Russian Cossacks, not in Russia, but during their occupation of Paris in 1814.

In A Bustling Marketplace, Prague, Opiz places Austrian Holy Roman Empire military men in their kasket helmets and white uniforms on the left, alongside French dignitaries in their fashionable bicorne hats on the right. All parties barter with Jewish merchants in the Havelska Street market in Prague. Situated alongside St. Gallus Church, the market was only blocks from the Jewish quarter. A banner showing a Magen David, seen in the center of the painting beneath the arches, is a testament to the Enlightenment and the sense of economic freedom enjoyed by the Jewish population in Prague at the time. This improved quality of life is reflected in the more prosperous- looking merchant  at the center, carrying rolls of fabric under his arm. It has been suggested that these are rolls of newly  manufactured printed cloth, signifying his more elevated business role as compared to his older Jewish counterparts on the far left and right who still trade in second hand goods.

Painted after the Treaty of Luneville, this work offers a rare glimpse into a time when Napoleon and the Holy Roman Empire were at peace between the years 1801-1805. Ironically, a year after this scene was painted in 1804, the bloody battle of Austerlitz would break out some 200 kilometers away, pitting the two empires represented on either side of this painting, against each other.