The painter Oskar Kokoschka was very impressed with the city of Prague upon his arrival there in 1934. At the time, he did not yet consider himself a refugee or émigré. He only planned to stay there for several months, hoping to improve his financial situation by strengthening ties with his Prague art dealer Hugo Feigl. Those ambitions bore fruit, and his stay stretched from a few months into four years, during which time he immortalised Prague in no less than 16 paintings, more than any artist before him.

However, Prague – Nostalgia was painted in London rather than Prague. When the political situation in Czechoslovakia grew increasingly unstable in spring 1938, Kokoschka resolved to depart for exile in England. Indeed his prospects for working there were somewhat promising. In summer 1938, the painter Max Beckmann had organised an exhibition in London featuring 20 of Kokoschka’s pieces.

With great difficulty, Kokoschka’s partner Olda Palkovska managed to procure plane tickets to London in October 1938. Prague – Nostalgia, the first work the artist painted in London, is a retrospective on their escape from Prague. The city is silhouetted in the background by a flash of lightning. The couple huddling at the centre of the foreground are Oskar Kokoschka and Olda Palkovska, who have successfully fled to England.