Already during his lifetime Rudolf Kremlička was regarded as the foremost Czech painter of the first half of the 20th century. While a student at the Academy of Visual Arts in Prague in the department of Hanuš Schwaiger, his main influence was Dutch genre painting, character- ised by its specific approach not only to subject matter but also its range of colours and the treatment of light. During the 1920s and ’30s landscapes began to feature increasingly in his oeuvre, particularly of the village of Kameničky in the Bohemian-Moravian Uplands that had previously been discovered by Antonín Slavíček. In 1915 the female figure started to assume an important place in Kremlička’s oeuvre. He would depict women at intimate moments of their toilet or resting. At other times, however, the female figures are engaged in work, such as washing clothes or washing the floor, i.e. activity that was a typical theme of the artists in the Devětsil group. Kremlička seldom painted from a model, mostly using his rich imagination in the course of the dozens of sketches he would make in preparation for the final work. The artist’s name is integrally linked with Ostrava. He had exhibitions here two years running: in 1929 and 1930. He would use a studio in the House of Art in Ostrava for painting his frequent portrait commissions, such as Portrait of the Mayor, Jan Prokeš or the one of the architect Karel Kotas.