Seriousy cold and wet today! This morning’s first mission is to buy a jacket, scarf and gloves. That done, I head north across the river, which looks like wet tarmac, to the Valatrzni Palace, which isn’t a palace but a big Functionalist building that reminds me of high school. It houses art of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, and it’s well worth seeing. My favourite from the 19th century is August Piepenhagen, a painter of romantic landscapes, including some lovely dark foggy moonlit scenes. He painted in the studio, “his sole inspiration, at least according to his daughter Charlotte, tufts of moss that he grew on the windowsills of his farm at Jeneralka.”

Also in the 19th Century collection is one painting by Amalie Manesova, sister of the much more famous artist Josef Manes. She rejected her suitor, never married, “sacrificed her artistic talents to look after her brothers,” and eventually opened a school for female artists. She might be disappointed to see that even in the contemporary collection in this gallery there are few women artists represented. Her painting shows a harvest scene with rich afternoon light and lively, Canaletto-like figures. She preferred figurative painting, but painted landscapes in accordance with her father’s wishes.

My vote for queerest and coolest painting goes to “Fauns Fleeing Before an Automobile” (1905) by Benes Knupfer, depicting with rough effective Goya-esque brushwork a large and a small faun running across a forest road, caught in the headlights of a car, which we see from behind in silhouette.

Downstairs, Frantisek Hudecek’s “Railroad Station with a Windmill” has a dark greenish blue sky and a lonely atmosphere reminiscent of Russell Drysdale or Edward Hopper. I’ll be thinking about the shades of difference in mood between this one and Piepenhagen’s night scenes for a while, and wondering why the railway picture seems so much sadder.

Most dubious analysis of art award goes to the realistic, life-size wax scultpure “Drowned Cat” (1904) by an artist whose name I scribbled down so messily that I now can’t read it. “Storja(?) merged this sensuous conception of light with the romantic and symbolic theme of death and annihilation, whereby he succeeded in capturing the spirit of the age.” Okay… I guess whatsisname’s pickled shark captures the spirit of our age, then. But hey, what do I know, maybe it does.

In the contemporary art I like Ale Guzzetti’s “Imaginary Playmate”, a sort of totem-pole made of plastic objets with a plasma globe (not working) on top, which makes electronic musical noises.

Dinner is more goulash soup and hot rum punch at a hotel on the old town square. The punch is delicious and doesn’t need the sugar that comes with it.

Back on the subject of art, there’s a print of a Modigliani nude above my bed. It’s a nice painting, but if I want to look at a naked woman every morning I can use a mirror. Why can’t it be a picture of a nice handsome naked man? Or even better, a handsome man in a nice suit? Maybe I should carry around a poster of, say, Tamara de Lempicka’s “Portrait d’Homme” to stick over whatever happens to be on the wall in the places I stay.

“The most compelling kind of male beauty is the devil’s” - Buket Uzuner, “The Sound of Fishsteps”. Amen.

P.S. there should be umlauts and circumflexes and things above lots of the letters in these Czech names, but I can’t figure out how to do them with Gmail and I can’t be hassled with doing them in Word and copying them over, so please just pretend they’re there.