1. Alphonse Mucha produced illustrations, advertisements, decorative panels, as well as designs, which became among the best-known images of the period.
75 Facts About Alphonse Mucha
1. 2.
Alphonse Mucha's family had a very modest income; his father Ondrej was a court usher, and his mother Amalie was a miller's daughter.
3.
Alphonse Mucha was the eldest of six children, all with names starting with "A".
4.
Alphonse 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.
5.
Alphonse Mucha had a talent for music: he was an alto singer and violin player.
6.
Alphonse Mucha's singing abilities allowed him to continue his musical education at the Gymnazium Brno in the Moravian capital of Brno, but his true ambition was to become an artist.
7.
Alphonse Mucha found some employment designing theatrical scenery and other decorations.
8.
Alphonse Mucha discovered Hans Makart, a very prominent academic painter, who created murals for many of the palaces and government buildings in Vienna, and was a master of portraits and historical paintings in grand format.
9.
Alphonse Mucha's style turned Mucha in that artistic direction and influenced his later work.
10.
Alphonse Mucha began experimenting with photography, which became an important tool in his later work.
11.
Alphonse Mucha arrived in Mikulov in southern Moravia, and began making portraits, decorative art and lettering for tombstones.
12.
Alphonse Mucha's work was appreciated, and he was commissioned by Count Eduard Khuen Belasi, a local landlord and nobleman, to paint a series of murals for his residence at Emmahof Castle, and then at his ancestral home in the Tyrol, Gandegg Castle.
13.
Alphonse Mucha showed his skill at mythological themes, the female form, and lush vegetal decoration.
14.
Alphonse Mucha founded a Czech students' club, and contributed political illustrations to nationalist publications in Prague.
15.
Alphonse Mucha moved to Paris in 1888 where he enrolled in the and the following year, 1889, Academie Colarossi.
16.
When he arrived in Paris, Alphonse Mucha found shelter with the help of the large Slavic community.
17.
Alphonse Mucha lived in a boarding house called the Cremerie at 13 rue de la Grande Chaumiere, whose owner, Charlotte Caron, was famous for sheltering struggling artists; when needed she accepted paintings or drawings in place of rent.
18.
Alphonse 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.
19.
Alphonse Mucha made illustrations for Le Petit Francais Illustre, which published stories for young people in both magazine and book form.
20.
Alphonse Mucha's illustrations began to give him a regular income.
21.
Alphonse Mucha was able to buy a harmonium to continue his musical interests, and his first camera, which used glass-plate negatives.
22.
Alphonse Mucha took pictures of himself and his friends, and regularly used it to compose his drawings.
23.
Alphonse Mucha became friends with Paul Gauguin, and shared a studio with him for a time when Gauguin returned from Tahiti in the summer of 1893.
24.
Alphonse Mucha received a medal of honor, his first official recognition.
25.
Alphonse Mucha added another important client in the early 1890s; the Central Library of Fine Arts, which specialized in the publication of books about art, architecture, and the decorative arts.
26.
Alphonse Mucha continued to publish illustrations for his other clients, including for a children's book of poetry by Eugene Manuel and for a magazine of the theater arts called La Costume au theatre.
27.
When Bernhardt called, Alphonse Mucha happened to be at the publishing house correcting proofs.
28.
Alphonse Mucha already had experience painting Bernhardt; he had made a series of illustrations of her performing in Cleopatra for Le Costume au Theatre in 1890.
29.
When Gismonda opened in October 1894, Alphonse 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.
30.
Alphonse Mucha gave Mucha a generous monthly salary in exchange for the rights to publish all his works.
31.
Alphonse Mucha designed posters for each successive Bernhardt play, beginning with a reprise of one of her early great successes, La Dame aux Camelias, followed by Lorenzaccio ; Medea ; La Tosca and Hamlet.
32.
Alphonse Mucha sometimes worked from photographs of Bernhardt, as he did for La Tosca.
33.
Alphonse Mucha designed posters for JOB cigarette papers, Ruinart Champagne, Lefevre-Utile biscuits, Nestle baby food, Ideal Chocolate, the Beers of the Meuse, Moet-Chandon champagne, Trappestine brandy, and Waverly and Perfect bicycles.
34.
Alphonse Mucha designed a calendar with a woman's head surrounded by the signs of the zodiac.
35.
Between 1896 and 1904 Alphonse Mucha created over one hundred poster designs for Champenois.
36.
Alphonse Mucha's posters focused almost entirely on beautiful women in lavish settings with their hair usually curling in arabesque forms and filling the frame.
37.
Alphonse 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.
38.
Alphonse Mucha 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.
39.
Alphonse Mucha immediately departed for the Balkans to make sketches of Balkan costumes, ceremonies, and architecture, which he put into his new work.
40.
Alphonse Mucha's 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.
41.
Alphonse Mucha 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.
42.
Alphonse Mucha's work appeared in many forms at the Exposition.
43.
Alphonse Mucha proposed that, after the Exposition, the top of the tower should be replaced by a sculptural monument to humanity constructed on the pedestal.
44.
The spiraling design of the snake is a nod to Alphonse Mucha's swirling Art Nouveau painting style.
45.
The Cascade pendant designed for Fouquet by Alphonse Mucha is in the form of a waterfall, composed of gold, enamel, opals, tiny diamonds, paillons, and a barocco or misshapen pearl.
46.
Alphonse Mucha's next project was a series of seventy-two printed plates of watercolors of designs, titled Documents Decoratifs, which were published in 1902 by the Librarie Centrale des Beaux-arts.
47.
Alphonse Mucha made a considerable income from his theatrical and advertising work, but he wished even more to be recognized as a serious artist and philosopher.
48.
Alphonse Mucha was a devoted Catholic, but was interested in mysticism.
49.
Alphonse Mucha 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".
50.
In March 1904, Alphonse Mucha sailed for New York and the beginning of his first visit to the United States.
51.
Alphonse Mucha's intent was to find funding for his grand project, The Slav Epic, which he had conceived during the 1900 Exposition.
52.
Alphonse Mucha had letters of introduction from Baroness Salomon de Rothschild.
53.
Alphonse Mucha rented a studio near Central Park, in New York, made portraits, and gave interviews and lectures.
54.
Alphonse Mucha commissioned Mucha to make a portrait of his daughter in a traditional Slavic style.
55.
Alphonse Mucha still had commissions to complete in France, and returned to Paris at the end of May 1904.
56.
Alphonse Mucha finished his commissions and returned to New York in early January 1905, and made four more trips between 1905 and 1910, usually staying for five to six months.
57.
Alphonse Mucha rejected most commercial proposals, but accepted one proposal in 1906 to design boxes and a store display for Savon Mucha, a soap bar.
58.
Alphonse Mucha made posters for the American actress Mrs Leslie Carter and the Broadway star Maude Adams, but they were largely echoes of his Bernhardt posters.
59.
Alphonse Mucha completed his plans for the Slav Epic in 1908 and 1909, and in February 1910, Charles Crane agreed to fund the project.
60.
Alphonse Mucha made the decision to return to his old country, still then part of the Austrian Empire.
61.
Alphonse Mucha designed and created a series of large-scale murals for the domed ceiling and walls with athletic figures in heroic poses, depicting the contributions of Slavs to European history over the centuries, and the theme of Slavic unity.
62.
The Lord Mayor's Hall was finished in 1911, and Alphonse Mucha was able to devote his attention to what he considered his most important work; The Slav Epic, a series of large paintings illustrating the achievements of the Slavic peoples over history.
63.
Alphonse Mucha used costumed models and still and motion picture cameras to set the scenes, often encouraging the models to create their own poses.
64.
Alphonse Mucha used egg tempera paint, which, according to his research, was quicker-drying and more luminous, and would last longer.
65.
Alphonse Mucha created the twenty canvases between 1912 and 1926.
66.
Alphonse Mucha worked throughout the First World War, when the Austrian Empire was at war with France, despite wartime restrictions, which made canvas hard to obtain.
67.
Alphonse Mucha continued his work after the war ended, when the new Czechoslovak Republic was created.
68.
Alphonse Mucha 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.
69.
Alphonse 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.
70.
Alphonse Mucha was arrested, interrogated for several days, and released.
71.
Alphonse Mucha 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.
72.
Alphonse Mucha was and remains widely known for his Art Nouveau work, which frustrated him.
73.
Alphonse Mucha is credited with restoring the movement of Czech Freemasonry.
74.
One of the largest collections of Alphonse Mucha's works is that of nine-year World No 1 professional tennis player Ivan Lendl, who started collecting his works upon meeting Jiri Alphonse Mucha in 1982.
75.
Alphonse Mucha's collection was exhibited publicly for the first time in 2013 in Prague.