When looking for an example of Decadence, I came across the work of Czech artist Mikolas Ales. His work interests because I wanted to see if the threads of Decadence found its way into the lonely hills of Bohemia, and they did.
Ales was born in Mirotice in 1852, and started drawing at a very young age. He became known as the "master of pen and ink," and he was first noted for his drawings of the Czech countryside and of nature. He studied at the Art Academy in Prague and lived for a while in Italy before returning to the countryside of Bohemia. During the middle ages, life in the Czech countryside became dominated by Catholicism, which clashed with the old peasant ways - superstition and folk magic. (This is still true today.) Ales was commissioned by churches to create religious drawings for holy calendars, and after his work was through, Ales began to capture religion in his own work - but in a very dark way. In our studies of Decadence, we have seen many artists and writers who either reject and shun organized religion, or have a dark fascination with certain aspects of the religion, such as the story of Salome or the book of Revelation - and the works of Ales are no exception. The saints, who are "worshiped" more in the Czech countryside than the figures of Jesus or Mary, were captured by Ales as bloodthirsty soldiers, riding through the land to fulfill the prophecies of end times. They don't depict bloodshed as much as they do gloom and dominance. A series of three drawings, called The Prophecies of Libuse, show a strange woman, who looks like a messenger - the angel of death. The "Four Horsemen" ride across the Czech countryside in another. The common thread that runs through Ales" religious drawings is that they are based on the book of Revelation, and that one of the men, in all his drawings, are carrying an axe. I tried to research the axe and exactly what it means, but I didn't find anything.
