Věnceslav Černý was a Czech illustrator and painter.

First, he studied at the Prague Academy of Fine Arts

Academy of Fine Arts in Prague

The Academy of Fine Arts, Prague was founded in 1799 and is the Czech Republic's oldest art college. The school offers twelve Master's degree programs and one Doctoral program.-History:...

, later the Academy in Vienna

Academy of Fine Arts Vienna

The Academy of Fine Arts Vienna is an institution of higher education in Vienna, Austria.- History :The Academy of Fine Arts Vienna was founded in 1692 as a private academy by the court-painter Peter Strudl, who became the Praefectus Academiae Nostrae. In 1701 he was ennobled as Baron of the Empire...

. Alternately lived in Prague, Mladá Boleslav and Železnice

Železnice

Železnice is a town and municipality in Jičín District in the Hradec Králové Region of the Czech Republic. The municipality covers an area of 13.01 km² and as of 2006 it had a population of 1,206....

. He was almost exclusively devoted to illustrating books (especially adventure books) and magazines (Světozor

Svetozor

Světozor was a Czech language illustrated magazine published in 19th and 20th century.Světozor was created by Pavel Josef Šafařík in 1834. Šafařík was inspired by the British penny press and the German Pfennig-Magazin...

, Zlatá Praha). A very high percentage of his works are related to historical battle themes and mediaeval civilisation in the form of drawings and large paintings.

He was a popular illustrator of many publishing houses in Prague (e.g. Kvasnička a Hampl, Alois Hynek, Toužimský etc.), and illustrated many books, especially those by Lidija Aleksejevna Čarská, František Josef Čečetka, Alois Jirásek

Alois Jirásek

Alois Jirásek was a Czech writer, author of historical novels and plays. Jirásek was a secondary-school teacher until his retirement in 1909. He wrote a series of historical novels imbued with faith in his nation and in progress toward freedom and justice...

, Karl May

Karl May

Karl Friedrich May was a popular German writer, noted mainly for adventure novels set in the American Old West, and similar books set in the Orient and Middle East . In addition, he wrote stories set in his native Germany, in China and in South America...

, Henryk Sienkiewicz

Henryk Sienkiewicz

Henryk Adam Aleksander Pius Sienkiewicz was a Polish journalist and Nobel Prize-winning novelist. A Polish szlachcic of the Oszyk coat of arms, he was one of the most popular Polish writers at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, and received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1905 for his...

. In the years 1893-1909 he illustrated sixteen books of Jules Verne

Jules Verne

Jules Gabriel Verne was a French author who pioneered the science fiction genre. He is best known for his novels Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea , A Journey to the Center of the Earth , and Around the World in Eighty Days...

.