Brief Biography-Julius Mařák, draughtsman and landscape artist, was born in Litomyšl, near Prague, in 1832. He was inclined to study music as his siblings were musicians. However, in his local school, he was a pupil of the artist Antonín Dvořák, who encouraged him to paint. Mařák studied at the Prague Academy of Fine Arts under Professor Max Haushofer, the German landscape painter, and later at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts. Leopold Rottmann influenced him there, but he was not impressed by Academies because of the emphasis on antiquity, and his preference was for nature. He rambled the Bohemian Forest, the Šumava, and the Krkonoše, the Giant Mountains in the north, from where he did several sketches to paint. Mařák taught landscape painting at the Academy and created what became known as the Mařák Landscape School. Antonín Slavícek was one of his many successful students.