The television production captures the last decade of the life of the now world-renowned painter Karel Purkyně (1834 - 1868) and his struggle for the possibility of creative expression. After studying in Paris, he returns to Prague. He is not recognized, has no success and actually lives on the support of his father, the famous physiologist Jan Evangelista Purkyně. The only understanding he finds is in his admirer Maria, whom he marries. But he loses her too due to his emotional involvement with another woman. He dies too young and leaves behind a work whose artistic value will only be appreciated much later, at the beginning of the twentieth century.