František Soukup was born on 7 February 1879 in Dvůr Králové nad Labem, a small town on the Elbe in north-east Bohemia, near the foothills of the Giant Mountains. It was to remain his home and his great source of inspiration throughout his life.
In 1900 he was accepted at the School of Arts and Crafts in Prague, one of the leading art schools in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He began in the sculpture department, where his teachers included the celebrated sculptor Stanislav Sucharda and the decorative artist Celda Klouček. He soon transferred to painting. After finishing his studies, he broadened his training abroad, spending time in Berlin and Munich before settling for several years in Paris. There he absorbed the lessons of French painting, and particularly of Impressionism, which left a lasting mark on his style.
The outbreak of the First World War brought his time abroad to an end. He enlisted in 1914 and served for four years before returning home to Dvůr Králové nad Labem in 1918, the year Czechoslovakia became an independent state.
In 1922 he organised an exhibition of his work at the Rudolfinum in Prague, one of the city's most prestigious venues. It was not a commercial success, but it led to a commission to decorate new buildings for the Municipal Electricity Works.
Soukup devoted himself above all to landscape painting, and he also painted genre scenes and portraits. His landscapes celebrate the countryside of his native region: its rolling hills, woodland, meadows and changing skies. They combine the freedom and luminous colour of French Impressionism with a deep and personal feeling for the Bohemian landscape. His poppy fields, painted on board with vivid touches of scarlet, are among his most appealing works.
He died in 1957. Today his paintings appear regularly at auction in Prague and are valued by collectors of Czech landscape painting.
