The modernization process and the rise of national consciousness around 1800 expressed itself in the Bohemian Lands in an attachment to the land, shared and expressed by both the German and the Czech cultural communities. Only later in the 19th century did issues of language and ethnicity divide this land attachment into two antagonistic currents.

Visual arts were instrumentalized in the expression and canonization of topics with symbolic importance in Romantic Nationalism: the national past and mythology, the authenticity of the country and its inhabitants, the character of local and national culture. Visualizations of heroic myths and of the national past, as exemplified by history painting, were accompanied by genres like landscape and genre painting, depicting the country folk, its folklore and visual culture, and its characteristic homeland. The popularity of such topics was reflected by the growing art scene and market: although official history and religious painting prevailed long into the 19th century, there was a growing demand for lesser and financially more accessible art forms and products, such as landscape and genre painting, graphic art and illustration, and also for applied arts and ornamental work. These genres were often better suited for experimentation with new forms, topics and materials.

The Romantic enchantment with nature, including the projection of human feelings and sentiments into the depictions of natural phenomena, led to a new assessment of landscape painting among Czech artists. But the mode of the Sublime (wild scenery with a dramatic atmosphere) was soon replaced by an interest in domestic landscapes, idyllic settings with mild atmosphere and veristic detail. This chimed with the Biedermeier emphasis on the virtues of domesticity, while also serving to appropriate and domesticate Bohemia as the historic homeland of the nation. The tradition of landscape painting was bolstered by a generation of popular vedutists, as well as by the rise of the first landscape atelier at the Prague Academy, opened in 1806 under the direction of the Bohemian-born Karel Postl (1769-1818). The popularity of such landscapes (at the same time Romantically heightened and domestically idealized) reached its apogee in the 1830s and ’40s. The Romantic heightening is best exemplified by Josef Navrátil (1798-1865), who decorated bourgeois interiors for his wealthy clients, but also produced on demand small-format Alpine views. Idealized homeland scenes co-occurred with a similar rustic trend in literature: its best examples are by Josef Mánes, who after 1850 symbolically merged the real with the idealized, the wild with the cultivated (“The country around Říp Mountain”, 1863). Such scenes also hint at the history, myths and folk associated with the Czech regions, a central concern in the ideology of national awakenings from the 1820s on, and especially after 1848. As opposed to a more traditional current of landscape painting, a very specific earlier example of Romantic treatment of landscape in relation to national past was created by the self-taught sculptor Václav Levý (1820-1870; later a student of Ludwig Schwanthaler in Munich) who between 1845 and 1850 created a sculpture park at Liběchov, in the sandstone hills north of Prague. Loosely relating to the tradition of landscape parks, he carved giant monster heads out of the rocks indicating the paths in the nearby forests, and sculpted a cave called Blaník (like the mountain of the same name, supposedly a resting place of chivalric defenders of Bohemia), decorating it with motifs from literary and national history as discussed in the salon of Levý´s patron Anton Veith, the owner of the Liběchov estate.

The Romantic historicism underlying such art was widespread. Besides history painting, the premier academic genre, other genres were also used to express the nation’s past. These (including illustration and/or the graphic arts) were better suited for experiments with new, less canonical historical topics, whose artistic legibility was as yet indeterminate. In 1824, Geschichte Böhmens in litographisch ausgeführten Blättern / Dějiny České v kamenopisně vyvedených obrazech, a picture-album of the history of Bohemia, was published by the Prague lithographer Antonín Machek (1775-1844), with the support of the director and students of the Academy (Czech and German alike), who furnished many of the drawings and were able for the first time to treat national history in a large visual series. Among its most prominent contributors were Josef Führich (1800-1876), Leopold Friese (1793-1842/46) and Antonín Gareis (1793-1863). The album is also an excellent example of the Romantic mingling of history and fiction: the topics of the album are drawn, not only from chronicles and historical writings, but also from collections of myths and recent fakes of quasi-bardic poetry. This Ossianic element in early-19th-century Czech culture is connected to the counterfeit Manuscripts of Dvůr Králové and Zelená Hora (1817). Although their (now wholly discredited) authenticity was hotly disputed throughout the century, their importance for the culture of Czech Romantic Nationalism is beyond dispute, including visual culture. Their illustrated editions by Josef Mánes (1855, left unfinished) and Mikoláš Aleš  (1884) exemplified the ongoing discussions about the national type and national style in the visual arts, so characteristic of Romantic historicism. The figures created in these successive works would later define the very type of the national hero. This tradition played into the ongoing clamour for a characteristic, modern and national Czech style (as opposed to traditional universal classicism and academicism) and for an adequate, modern visual representation of national themes – “Czech”, the countryside, its people, their culture, and their harmonious, Slavic character as reflected in their art.

Another line of artistic exploration was opened up by illustrated collections of folklore, mostly songs. A first illustrated edition, Sbírka českých národních písní / Sammlung böhmischer National-Lieder, based on texts collected by Karel Jaromír Erben and prepared by the students of the Academy under Christian Ruben (1805-1875), appeared in 1845. But the most famous cycle was authored by Josef Mánes from the 1850s on: it was only partly published (in illustrated periodicals), the rest remaining in drawings as his planned edition never appeared. These illustrations rely heavily on the sketches he made during field trips around the Bohemian Lands (like many other painters or folklore collectors), studying folk costumes and activities and combining this with ornamental elements from many sources, including traditional folk ornament.

This visual nation-building can be further traced in the formation of nationally-minded associations. They, too, took part in the quest for a pronounced and representatively Czech national style. This quest broadened beyond the academic sphere and came to include the emerging Applied and Decorative Arts, as can be seen in the insignia of the newly formed associations. Thus, the flag of the Sokol sport association created by Josef Mánes (1863) used elements of Czech folk ornament for a very modern urban object. These trends in decorative arts and architecture finally merged in the formation of an official “national style” after the creation of the first Czech Republic in 1918. A similar intermingling of genres characterizes the decoration of Prague’s National Theatre, which moves close to realm of monumental history painting; nevertheless, it combines symbolic elements, techniques and approaches explored previously in the “lesser genres” and adopts these into the ideological and visual programme of a monumental Gesamtkunstwerk. As such, it symbolically crowns the period of Romantic Nationalism in the Bohemian Lands with an all-encompassing vision of the national past in a pronounced visual style.