Alphonse Mucha

Alfons Maria Mucha (; 24 July 1860 – 14 July 1939), known in English as Alphonse Mucha, was a Czech painter, illustrator, and graphic artist. Living in Paris during the Art Nouveau period, he was widely known for his distinctly stylised and decorative theatrical posters, particularly those of Sarah Bernhardt. He produced illustrations, advertisements, decorative panels, as well as designs, which became among the best-known images of the period.

In the second part of his career, at the age of 57, he returned to his homeland and devoted himself to a series of twenty monumental symbolist canvases known as The Slav Epic, depicting the history of all the Slavic peoples of the world, then a province of the Austrian Empire (present-day a region of the Czech Republic). His family had a very modest income; his father Ondřej was a court usher, and his mother Amálie was a miller's daughter. Alphonse was the eldest of six children, all with names starting with "A".

Mucha showed an early talent for drawing; a local merchant impressed by his work gave him a gift of paper, at the time a luxury item. In the preschool period, he drew exclusively with his left hand. He had a talent for music: he was an alto singer and violin player. After completing , he wanted to continue with his studies, but his family was not able to fund them, as they were already funding the studies of his three step-siblings. After his voice broke, he gave up his chorister position, but played as a violinist during masses.

Munich

Count Belasi decided to bring Mucha to Munich for formal training, and paid his tuition fees and living expenses at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts. He moved there in September 1885. It is not clear how Mucha actually studied at the Munich Academy; there is no record of his being enrolled as a student there. However, he did become friends with a number of notable Slavic artists there, including the Czechs Karel Vítězslav Mašek and Ludek Marold and the Russian Leonid Pasternak, father of the famous poet and novelist Boris Pasternak.

He founded a Czech students' club, and contributed political illustrations to nationalist publications in Prague. In 1886, he received a notable commission for a painting of the Czech patron saints Cyril and Methodius from a group of Czech emigrants, including some of his relatives, who had founded a Roman Catholic church in the town of Pisek in the U.S. He was very happy with the artistic environment of Munich: he wrote to friends, "Here I am in my new element, painting. I cross all sorts of currents, but without effort, and even with joy. Here, for the first time, I can find the objectives to reach which used to seem inaccessible." However, he found he could not remain forever in Munich; the Bavarian authorities imposed increasing restrictions upon foreign students and residents. Count Belasi suggested that he travel either to Rome or to Paris. With Belasi's financial support, he decided in 1887 to move to Paris.

Paris

Mucha moved to Paris in 1888 where he enrolled in the and the following year, 1889. The two schools taught a wide variety of different styles. His first professors at the Académie Julian were Jules Lefebvre who specialised in female nudes and allegorical paintings, and Jean-Paul Laurens, whose specialties were historical and religious paintings in a realistic and dramatic style. At the end of 1889, as he approached the age of thirty, his patron, Count Belasi, decided that Mucha had received enough education and ended his subsidies.

When he arrived in Paris, Mucha found shelter with the help of the large Slavic community. He lived in a boarding house called the Crémerie at 13 rue de la Grande Chaumière, whose owner, Charlotte Caron, was famous for sheltering struggling artists; when needed she accepted paintings or drawings in place of rent. Mucha decided to follow the path of another Czech painter he knew from Munich, Ludek Marold, who had made a successful career as an illustrator for magazines. In 1890 and 1891, he began providing illustrations for the weekly magazine La Vie populaire, which published novels in weekly segments. His illustration for a novel by Guy de Maupassant, called The Useless Beauty, was on the cover of 22 May 1890 edition. He also made illustrations for Le Petit Français illustré, which published stories for young people in both magazine and book form. For this magazine he provided dramatic scenes of battles and other historic events, including a cover illustration of a scene from the Franco-Prussian War which was on the cover of the 23 January 1892 edition.

His illustrations began to give him a regular income. He was able to buy a harmonium to continue his musical interests, and his first camera, which used glass-plate negatives. He took pictures of himself and his friends, and also regularly used it to compose his drawings. He became friends with Paul Gauguin, and shared a studio with him for a time when Gauguin returned from Tahiti in the summer of 1893. In late autumn 1894, he also became friends with the playwright August Strindberg, with whom he had common interests in philosophy and mysticism.

His magazine illustrations led to book illustration; he was commissioned to provide illustrations for Scenes and Episodes of German History by the historian Charles Seignobos. Four of his illustrations, including one depicting the death of Frederic Barbarossa, were chosen for display at the 1894 Paris Salon of Artists. He received a medal of honour, his first official recognition.

Mucha added another important client in the early 1890s; the Central Library of Fine Arts, which specialised in the publication of books about art, architecture, and the decorative arts. It later launched a new magazine in 1897 called Art et Decoration, which played an early and important role in publicising the Art Nouveau style. Mucha continued to publish illustrations for his other clients, including for a children's book of poetry by Eugène Manuel and for a magazine of the theatre arts called La Costume au théâtre.

Sarah Bernhardt's theatre

At the end of 1894, Mucha's career took a dramatic and unexpected turn when he began to work for the French stage actress Sarah Bernhardt. As Mucha later described it, on 26 December, Bernhardt made a telephone call to Maurice de Brunhoff, the manager of the publishing firm Lemercier, which printed her theatrical posters, ordering a new poster for the continuation of the play Gismonda. The play, by Victorien Sardou, had already opened with great success on 31 October 1894 at the Théâtre de la Renaissance on the Boulevard Saint-Martin. Bernhardt decided to have a poster made to advertise the prolongation of the theatrical run after the Christmas break, insisting it be ready by 1 January 1895. Because of the holidays, none of the regular Lemercier artists was available.

When Bernhardt called, Mucha happened to be at the publishing house correcting proofs. He already had experience painting Bernhardt; he had made a series of illustrations of her performing in Cleopatra for Le Costume au Théâtre in 1890. When Gismonda opened in October 1894, Mucha had been commissioned by the magazine Le Gaulois to make a series of illustrations of Bernhardt in the role for a special Christmas supplement, which was published at Christmas 1894, for the high price of fifty centimes per copy.

Brunhoff asked Mucha to quickly design the new poster for Bernhardt. The poster was more than life-size; a little more than two meters high, with Bernhardt in the costume of a Byzantine noblewoman, dressed in an orchid headdress and a floral stole, and holding a palm branch in the Easter procession near the end of the play. One of the innovative features of the poster was the ornate rainbow-shaped arch behind the head, almost like a halo, which focused attention on her face; this feature appeared in all of Mucha's future theatre posters. Probably because of a shortage of time, some areas of the background were left blank, without his usual decoration. The only background decoration was the Byzantine mosaic tiles behind her head. The poster featured extremely fine draftsmanship and delicate pastel colours, unlike the typical brightly coloured posters of the time. The top of the poster, with the title, was richly composed and ornamented, and balanced the bottom, where the essential information was given in the shortest possible form: just the name of the theatre.

The poster appeared on the streets of Paris on 1 January 1895 and caused an immediate sensation. Bernhardt was pleased by the reaction; she ordered four thousand copies of the poster in 1895 and 1896, and gave Mucha a six-year contract to produce more. With his posters all over the city, Mucha found himself quite suddenly famous.

Following Gismonda, Bernhardt switched to a different printer, F. Champenois, who, like Mucha, was put under contract to work for Bernhardt for six years. Champenois had a large printing house on Boulevard Saint Michel that employed three hundred workers, with twenty steam presses. He gave Mucha a generous monthly salary in exchange for the rights to publish all his works. With his increased income, Mucha was able to move to a three-bedroom apartment with a large studio inside a large historic house at 6 Rue du Val-de-Grâce originally built by François Mansart.

Mucha designed posters for each successive Bernhardt play, beginning with a reprise of one of her early great successes, La Dame aux Camelias (September 1896), followed by Lorenzaccio (1896); Medea (1898); La Tosca (1898), and Hamlet (1899). He sometimes worked from photographs of Bernhardt, as he did for La Tosca. In addition to posters, he designed theatrical programs, sets, costumes, and jewellery for Bernhardt. The enterprising Bernhardt set aside a certain number of printed posters of each play to sell to collectors.

Commercial art and posters

The success of the Bernhardt posters brought Mucha commissions for advertising posters. He designed posters for JOB cigarette papers, Ruinart Champagne, Lefèvre-Utile biscuits, Nestlé baby food, Idéal Chocolate, the Beers of the Meuse, Moët & Chandon champagne, La Trappistine brandy, and Waverly and Perfect bicycles. His posters focused almost entirely on beautiful women in lavish settings with their hair usually curling in arabesque forms and filling the frame. His poster for the railway line between Paris and Monaco-Monte Carlo (1897) did not show a train or any identifiable scene of Monaco or Monte Carlo; it showed a beautiful young woman in a kind of reverie, surrounded by swirling floral images, which suggested the turning wheels of a train.

With Champenois, he also created a new kind of product, a decorative panel, a poster without text, purely for decoration. They were published in large print runs for a modest price. The first series was The Seasons (1896), depicting four different women in extremely decorative floral settings representing the seasons of the year. In 1897 he produced an individual decorative panel of a young woman in a floral setting, called Rêverie, for Champenois. He also designed a calendar with a woman's head surrounded by the signs of the zodiac. The rights were resold to Léon Deschamps, the editor of the arts review La Plume, who brought it out with great success in 1897. The Seasons (1896) series was followed by The Flowers (1898), The Arts (1898), The Times of Day (1899), Precious Stones (1900), and The Moon and the Stars (1902). Between 1896 and 1904 Mucha created over one hundred poster designs for Champenois. These were sold in various formats, ranging from expensive versions printed on Japanese paper or vellum, to less expensive versions which combined multiple images, to calendars and postcards.

The fame of his posters led to success in the art world; he was invited by Deschamps to show his work in the Salon des Cent exhibition in 1896, and then, in 1897, to have a major retrospective in the same gallery showing 448 works. The magazine La Plume made a special edition devoted to his work, and his exhibition travelled to Vienna, Prague, Munich, Brussels, London, and New York, giving him an international reputation.

Le Pater (1899)

Mucha made a considerable income from his theatrical and advertising work, but he wished even more to be recognised as a serious artist and philosopher. He was a devoted Catholic, but also was interested in mysticism. In January 1898 he joined the Paris masonic lodge of the Grand Orient de France. Shortly before the 1900 Exposition Universelle, as he wrote in his memoirs, "I had not found any real satisfaction in my old kind of work. I saw that my way was to be found elsewhere, little bit higher. I sought a way to spread the light which reached further into even the darkest corners. I didn't have to look for very long. The Pater Noster (Lord's Prayer): why not give the words a pictorial expression?". He approached his publisher, Henri Piazza, and proposed the book, in these words: "First a cover page with symbolist ornament; then the same ornament developed in a kind a variation on each line of the prayer; a page explaining each line in a calligraphic form; and a page rendering the idea of each line in the form of an image."

Le Pater was published on 20 December 1899, only 510 copies were printed. The original watercolour paintings of the page were displayed in the Austrian pavilion at the 1900 Exposition Universelle. He considered Le Pater to be his printed masterpiece, and referred to it in the New York Sun of 5 January 1900 as a work into which he had "put his soul". Critic Charles Masson, who reviewed it for Art et Decoration, wrote: "There is in that man a visionary; it is the work of an imagination not suspected by those who only know his talent for the agreeable and charming."

Paris Universal Exposition (1900) The Paris Universal Exposition of 1900, famous as the first grand showcase of the Art Nouveau, gave Mucha an opportunity to move in an entirely different direction, toward the large-scale historical paintings which he had admired in Vienna. It also allowed him to express his Czech patriotism. His foreign name had caused much speculation in the French press, which distressed him. Sarah Bernhardt stood up on his behalf, declaring in La France that Mucha was "a Czech from Moravia not only by birth and origin, but also by feeling, by conviction and by patriotism." He applied to the Austrian government and received a commission to create murals for the Pavilion of Bosnia & Herzegovina (then under Austro-Hungarian rule) at the Exposition. This pavilion displayed examples of industry, agriculture, and culture of these provinces, which in 1878, by the Treaty of Berlin, had been taken away from Turkey and put under the tutorship of Austria. The temporary building built for the Exposition had three large halls with two levels, with a ceiling more than twelve meters high, and with natural light from skylights. Mucha's experience in theatre decoration gave him the ability to paint large-scale paintings in a short period of time.

Mucha's original concept was a group of murals depicting the suffering of the Slavic inhabitants of the region caused by the occupation by foreign powers. The sponsors of the exhibit, the Austrian government, the new occupier of the region, declared that this was a little pessimistic for a World's Fair. He changed his project to depict a future society in the Balkans where Catholic and Orthodox Christians and Muslims lived in harmony together; this was accepted, and he began work. Mucha immediately departed for the Balkans to make sketches of Balkan costumes, ceremonies, and architecture, which he put into his new work. His decoration included one large allegorical painting, Bosnia Offers Her Products to the Universal Exposition, and an additional set of murals on three walls, showing the history and cultural development of the region. He did discreetly include some images of the sufferings of the Bosnians under foreign rule, which appear in the arched band at the top of the mural. As he had done with his theatre work, he often took photographs of posed models and painted from them, simplifying the forms. Whereas the work depicted dramatic events, the overall impression that it gave was one of serenity and harmony. In addition to the murals, Mucha also designed a menu for the restaurant of the Bosnia & Herzegovina Pavilion.

His work appeared in many forms at the Exposition. Besides the posters for the official Austrian participation in the Exposition and the menu for the restaurant at the Bosnian pavilion and for the official opening banquet, he also produced displays for the jeweller Georges Fouquet and the perfume maker Houbigant, with statuettes and panels of women depicting the scents of rose, orange blossom, violet, and buttercup. His more serious artworks, including his drawings for Le Pater, were shown in the Austrian Pavilion and in the Austrian section of the Grand Palais.

His work at the Exposition earned him the title of Knight of the Order of Franz Joseph from the Austrian government, and he was named to the Legion of Honour by the French government. During the course of the Exposition, Mucha proposed another unusual project. The French Government planned to take down the Eiffel Tower, built especially for the Exposition, as soon as the event ended. Mucha proposed that, after the Exposition, the top of the tower should be replaced by a sculptural monument to humanity constructed on the pedestal. However, the tower proved to be popular with both tourists and Parisians, and it was left in its original form after the Exhibit ended.

Jewellery and Documents Decoratifs (1902) Mucha's many interests included jewellery. Around 1900 he had begun to teach at the Academy Colarossi, where he himself had been a student when he first arrived in Paris. His course was precisely described in the catalogue: "The object of the Mucha course is to permit the student to have the necessary knowledge for artistic decoration, applied to decorative panels, windows, porcelain, enamels, furniture, jewellery, posters, etc." In 1899, he collaborated with the jeweller Georges Fouquet to make a bracelet for Sarah Bernhardt in the form of a serpent, made of gold and enamel, similar to the costume jewellery Bernhardt had worn in Medea. According to Jiří Mucha, this bracelet was created to conceal Bernhardt's arthritic wrist. The spiralling design of the snake is a nod to Mucha's swirling Art Nouveau painting style. The Cascade pendant designed for Fouquet (1900) is in the form of a waterfall, composed of gold, enamel, opals, tiny diamonds, paillons, and a barocco (misshapen pearl). After the 1900 Exposition, Fouquet decided to open a new shop at 6 Rue Royale. He asked Mucha to design the interior.

The centrepieces of the design were two peacocks, the traditional symbol of luxury, made of bronze and wood with coloured glass decoration. To the side was a shell-shaped fountain, with three gargoyles spouting water into basins, surrounding the statue of a nude woman. The salon was further decorated with carved mouldings and stained glass, thin columns with vegetal designs, and a ceiling with moulded floral and vegetal elements. It marked a summit of Art Nouveau decoration.

The shop opened in 1901, just as tastes were beginning to change, moving away from Art Nouveau to more naturalistic patterns. It was taken apart in 1923, and a replaced by a more traditional shop design. Fortunately most of the original decoration was preserved, and was donated in 1914 and 1949 to the Carnavalet Museum in Paris, where it can be seen today.

Mucha's next project was a series of seventy-two printed plates in watercolour, titled Documents Decoratifs, which were published as a book in 1902 by the Central Library of Fine Arts. The plates contained elaborate designs for brooches and other pieces, with swirling arabesques and vegetal forms, and incrustations of enamel and coloured stones. They represented ways that floral, vegetal and natural forms could be used in decoration and decorative objects.

Marriage and trips to the U.S. (1904–1909)

On 10 June 1906, he married his wife Marie Chytilová in Prague. Their first child, daughter Jaroslava, was born in New York in 1909. Their son Jiří Mucha was born in Prague in 1915.

Whilst living in Paris, Mucha made five trips to the U.S., between 1904 and 1909, usually staying for five to six months. His intent was to find funding for his grand project, The Slav Epic, which he had conceived during the 1900 Exposition. He had letters of introduction from Baroness Salomon de Rothschild. In March 1904, Mucha sailed for New York, and when he landed, he was already a celebrity in the United States; his posters had been widely displayed during Sarah Bernhardt's annual U.S. tours since 1896. He rented a studio near Central Park, made portraits, and gave interviews and lectures. He still had commissions to complete in France, and returned to Paris at the end of May 1904. He continued taking trips to the U.S. until 1909, and after his marriage in 1906, his wife would join him as well.

His principal income in the United States came from teaching; he taught illustration and design at the New York School of Applied Design for Women, at the Philadelphia School of Art for five weeks, and became a visiting professor at the Art Institute of Chicago. He made posters for the U.S. actress Mrs. Leslie Carter (known as 'The U.S. Sarah Bernhardt') and the Broadway star Maude Adams, but they were largely echoes of his Bernhardt posters. He rejected most commercial proposals, but accepted one proposal in 1906 to design boxes and a store display for Savon Mucha, a soap bar. In 1908, he undertook one large decoration project, for the interior of the German Theatre of New York; he produced three large allegorical murals, in the Art Nouveau style, representing 'Tragedy', 'Comedy', and 'Truth'. Besides the decoration, he made graphic designs, stage and costume designs. Artistically, the trip was not a success; portrait painting was not his strong point, and the German Theatre closed in 1909, one year after it opened.

He also made contact with Pan-Slavic organisations. At one Pan-Slavic banquet in New York City, he met Charles Richard Crane, a wealthy businessman and philanthropist, who was a passionate Slavophile. More importantly, he shared Mucha's enthusiasm for a series of monumental paintings on Slavic history, and he became Mucha's most important patron. He commissioned Mucha to make a portrait of his daughter Josephine Crane Bradley, in the character of Slavia, in Slavic costume and surrounded by symbols from Slavic folklore. This is often considered to be his finest work during his trips to the U.S. When Mucha designed the Czechoslovak banknotes, he used his portrait of Crane's daughter as the model for Slavia for the 100 koruna note. In 2021 it was announced that a new, permanent home would be found for the paintings in central Prague, to be completed in 2026. In 2025, it was decided the loan to Moravský Krumlov would be extended for five years until 2031.

While he was working on The Slav Epic, he also did work for the Czech government. In 1918, he designed the Czechoslovak koruna bank note, with the image of Slavia, the daughter of his U.S. patron Charles Crane. He also designed postage stamps for his new country. He declined commercial work, but did make occasional posters for philanthropic and cultural events, such as the Lottery of the Union of Southwestern Moravia, and for Prague cultural events.

End of life In the political turmoil of the 1930s, Mucha's work received little attention in Czechoslovakia. However, in 1936 a major retrospective was held in Paris at the Jeu de Paume (museum), with 139 works, including three canvases from The Slav Epic.

Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany began to threaten Czechoslovakia in the 1930s. Mucha began work on a new series, a triptych depicting the Age of Reason, the Age of Wisdom and the Age of Love, which he worked on from 1936 to 1938, but never completed. On 15 March 1939, the German army paraded through Prague, and Hitler, at Prague Castle, declared lands of the former Czechoslovakia to be part of the Greater Germanic Reich as the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Mucha's role as a Slav nationalist and Freemason made him a prime target. He was arrested, interrogated for several days, and released. By then his health was broken. He contracted pneumonia and died on 14 July 1939, 10 days short of his 79th birthday and over a month before the outbreak of World War II. Though public gatherings were banned, a huge crowd attended his interment in the Slavín Monument of Vyšehrad Cemetery, reserved for notable figures in Czech culture.

Legacy Mucha was and remains widely known for his Art Nouveau work, which frustrated him. According to his son and biographer, Jiří Mucha, he did not think much of Art Nouveau. "What is it, Art Nouveau?" he asked. "...Art can never be new." He took the greatest pride in his work as a history painter.

Although it enjoys great popularity today, at the time of his death Mucha's style was considered outdated. His son Jiří devoted much of his life to writing about him and bringing attention to his artwork. In his own country, the new authorities were not interested in Mucha. The Slav Epic was rolled and stored for twenty-five years before being shown in Moravský Krumlov. The National Gallery in Prague now displays The Slav Epic, and has a major collection of Mucha's work.

The Mucha Museum, located in Prague's Kounice and Savarin Palaces, is the only museum dedicated to the artist, and opened in 1998.

One of the largest collections of Mucha's works is that of Czech nine-year World Champion tennis player Ivan Lendl, who started collecting his works upon meeting Jiří Mucha in 1982. His collection was exhibited publicly for the first time in 2013 in Prague.

Mucha is also credited with restoring the movement of Czech Freemasonry.