Alphonse Mucha was a Bohemian and Czech painter, illustrator, and graphic artist who was born on July 24, 1860. He is best known for the decorative theatrical posters, particularly those of French stage actress Sarah Bernhardt.
Later in life, he focused on painting a series of twenty monumental canvases known as The Slav Epic, which depicts the history of the Slavic people.
His daughter, Jaroslava Muchová help restore these canvases which were hidden from Nazis.
From an early, Mucha showed talent in not only drawing but also music. Supposedly, he drew exclusively with his left hand and was an alto singer and violin player.
At the age of 19, while in Vienna, he was employed as an apprentice scenery painter for Vienna theaters. There he met Hans Makart, an Austrian painter, who influenced Mucha's later work.
In 1885, Mucha moved to Munich where he became friends with notable Slavic artists. While in Munich, he founded a Czech students' club and contributed political illustrations to nationalist publications in Prague.
A few years later, he moved to Paris.
While in Paris, Mucha began providing illustrations for magazine publications and novels, which provided a regular income. One investment he made was purchasing a camera that used glass-plate negatives. This allowed him to use pictures he took to compose drawings.
In the 1890s, Art Nouveau was the modern style objecting the academic art of the 19th century. This would play an important role in Mucha's work.
At the end of the 1894, Mucha was asked to draw a last-minute poster for actress Sarah Bernhardt to advertise the continuation of the play Gismonda. Mucha created a life-size poster of Bernhardt in the costume of a Byzantine noblewoman with decorative Byzantine mosaic tiles behind her head. The poster appeared on the streets of Paris on January 1st, 1895. Mucha became famous overnight.
His new fame landed big advertising commissions for JOB cigarette papers, Ruinart Champagne, Lefèvre-Utile biscuits, Nestlé baby food, Idéal Chocolate, the Beers of the Meuse, Moët-Chandon champagne, Trappestine brandy, and Waverly and Perfect bicycles.
In 1896, Mucha introduced a series of illustrations that was purely for decoration known as The Seasons, which depicted four different women in decorative floral settings representing the seasons of the year. Posters of beautiful women became a common format.
The Paris Universal Exposition of 1900 allowed Mucha to move in a different direction toward large-scale historical paintings and express his Czech patriotism.
In 1904, Mucha sailed to the United States to find funding for his grand project, The Slav Epic. Considered a celebrity in New York, Mucha met Charles Richard Crane, a wealthy businessman and philanthropist. Crane commissioned Mucha to make a portrait of his daughter in traditional Slavic style. Mucha would then later use Crane's daughter as the model for the Czechoslovak 100 koruna bill.
A few years later, Crane agreed to fund Mucha's project.
The Slav Epic was shown in Prague twice in Mucha's lifetime, in 1919 and 1928. It was then rolled up and put in storage.
Gismonda (1894)
Painting, part of the series The Arts (1898)
Slavs in their Original Homeland:
Between the Turanian Whip and the Sword of the Goths,
part of the series The Slave Epic (1912)
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