Alphonse Mucha Biography

Alphonse Mucha Biography: From Moravia to the Slav Epic

Alphonse Mucha was already in his mid-thirties when a poster for Sarah Bernhardt made his name across Paris. The image seemed to announce a new style overnight, but its maker had spent years painting theatre scenery, studying in Munich and Paris, illustrating books and magazines, and learning how to shape a figure for print. Later, when he turned much of his energy to the monumental Slav Epic, he carried that experience with him. The course of Mucha’s life is a story of changes in place, scale and audience, and of ambitions that reached far beyond the posters that first made him famous.^[1][2]

Born in Moravia under Austrian rule, Mucha worked in Vienna, Paris and the United States before returning to Bohemia. He designed for performers and manufacturers, taught students, made photographs, devised jewellery and interiors, and painted history on canvases several metres wide. He also lived through the founding of Czechoslovakia and the German occupation that followed two decades later. The events matter because Mucha understood art as something that could enter public life, whether on a city wall, a banknote or a vast painted cycle.^[1][3]

At a Glance

• Born24 July 1860, Ivančice, Moravia^[1]
• Died14 July 1939^[1]
• Early trainingTheatre scenery in Vienna; art study in Munich and Paris^[1]
• Paris breakthroughGismonda designed in 1894 and displayed in January 1895^[5][6]
• Major cycleTwenty Slav Epic canvases, painted 1911–1926^[11]
• Public giftSlav Epic presented to the City of Prague in 1928^[1][11]

Alphonse Mucha in context

Movements1880–1930 Artists1860–1940 Key works1890–1930

Artistic context

188018901900191019201930

Symbolism

c. 1886–1910; parallel context

Art Nouveau

c. 1890–1914

Mucha’s Paris posters and decorative designs

1894–1903

Overlapping lifetimes, not direct influence

18601880190019201940

Alphonse Mucha

1860–1939

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

1864–1901; Paris poster comparison

Gustav Klimt

1862–1918; Vienna modernist comparison

Work dates

18901900191019201930

Gismonda

designed 1894

JOB poster

1896 design

Le Pater

1899 book

Slavia insurance poster

1907

The Slavs in Their Original Homeland

1912

Apotheosis of the Slavs

1926

Contents

1. Childhood in Moravia, 1860–1879
2. Vienna, Mikulov and formal training, 1880–1889
3. Illustration, teaching and a camera, 1890–1894
4. Sarah Bernhardt and the Paris breakthrough, 1894–1896
5. Posters, panels and the Paris workshop, 1896–1903
6. The American years and Charles R. Crane, 1904–1909
7. Prague, Zbiroh and the Slav Epic, 1910–1928
8. Later projects and the final years, 1929–1939
9. A life seen through the work

Follow Alphonse Mucha’s career through four stages

1860–1894Training and illustration 1894–1903Paris posters and design 1904–1909American search 1910–1939Return and the Epic

1860–1894

From Moravia to Paris

Mucha’s early path led through theatre painting in Vienna, patron-supported study in Munich and Paris, and magazine and book illustration. Paris gave him the skills and contacts for his later poster work.

1894–1903

A new public audience

The 1894 Gismonda design began his Bernhardt collaboration. Champenois printed advertising posters and decorative panels, while Mucha also developed books, jewellery and other applied designs.

1904–1909

Finding support for a larger project

Mucha visited the United States repeatedly while seeking the backing needed for a monumental history of the Slavs. Charles Richard Crane agreed to sponsor the Slav Epic in 1909.

1910–1939

Painting and public work in Bohemia

After returning in 1910, Mucha worked on the twenty Slav Epic canvases from 1911 to 1926. Civic and decorative projects remained part of his practice, and the completed cycle was presented to Prague in 1928.

Childhood in Moravia, 1860–1879

Alphonse Maria Mucha was born on 24 July 1860 in Ivančice, a town in South Moravia. His father worked in the local court. He grew up during a period of Czech cultural revival, when language, history and the arts were closely bound to questions of identity within the Austrian Empire. Those concerns did not make every childhood drawing a forecast of the Slav Epic, but they formed part of the world to which he later returned.^[1]

The Mucha Foundation records early drawing and a choral scholarship that took him to school in Brno. He did not enter the Prague Academy of Fine Arts after an unsuccessful application. Instead, he worked for a time in the court and found opportunities to make designs for magazines and theatres. The route into an artistic career was pieced together through paid work and local contacts, not a straight path from school to an established studio.^[1]

That beginning is useful when looking at the mature artist. Mucha’s later ease with lettering, costume and ornamental pattern had roots in practical jobs where images had to serve an occasion or a publication. His sense of Czech cultural identity also developed alongside a life spent moving between languages and cities. Both experiences shaped what he made; neither alone explains it.

Vienna, Mikulov and formal training, 1880–1889

In 1880 Mucha went to Vienna to work as an apprentice scenery painter for the Kautsky-Brioschi-Burghardt theatre design company. Stage work demanded large images that could be understood from a distance, figures that carried a role, and settings that helped a scene become legible. He took evening art classes and visited galleries while working. The catastrophic fire at Vienna’s Ring Theatre in 1881 brought financial losses to one of the company’s important clients, and Mucha was among the employees dismissed.^[1]

He moved to Mikulov in Moravia, where portraits of local people drew the attention of Count Karl Khuen-Belasi. The count commissioned decorative work and supported Mucha’s further education. Mucha studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich from 1885, then travelled to Paris in 1887. In each move, a mixture of skill, patronage and circumstance opened the next possibility. His early decorative commissions also gave him experience of a room as a whole, something that would matter again in Paris and Prague.^[1]

Paris offered several kinds of training. At the Académie Julian, Mucha studied drawing and painting; he later attended the Académie Colarossi. When Khuen-Belasi’s financial support ended in 1889, he had to earn his living. He began taking illustration commissions for French and Czech publishers, and a reliable working practice developed under the demands of print. Drawing was now a means of income as well as study.^[1]

The decade left him with a varied foundation: theatre scenery, portraiture, formal figure training, decorative schemes and published illustration. The range helps explain why the later poster designer could solve problems of scale, pose and reproduction at once. It also resists the comforting idea that his famous style arrived fully formed in a single lucky commission.

Illustration, teaching and a camera, 1890–1894

During the early 1890s Mucha found more work with publishers and theatre magazines. The Foundation timeline places him among the artists and writers who met at Charlotte Caron’s crémerie in Paris and records a period in which Paul Gauguin shared his studio. Such connections are part of the social life of an artist, but Mucha’s daily work remained the making of images for particular clients and publications.^[1]

He illustrated books and contributed drawings to Le Costume au théâtre et à la ville, a magazine concerned with theatre costume. He also began teaching drawing. These activities brought different kinds of observation together. A theatre costume needed to signal character; a book illustration had to work with a text; a lesson required him to explain how a figure could be constructed. The practical variety is more revealing than a list of names he happened to know.^[1]

Mucha had experimented with photography in Vienna and bought a camera in Paris. His photographs were not merely a record of finished work. Models could be posed in the studio, gestures tested and costumes studied. After he moved to a larger Paris studio in 1896, photography became an especially regular part of his working process. The surviving photographs therefore open a view onto decisions that a final print can hide.^[1][4]

By late 1894 he was an experienced illustrator with theatre connections and knowledge of printing. The sudden visibility of his next poster should be set against that preparation.

Sarah Bernhardt and the Paris breakthrough, 1894–1896

The poster was for Gismonda, Victorien Sardou’s play starring Sarah Bernhardt. It was designed in 1894 and appeared across Paris on 1 January 1895 to advertise a January run. The play itself had first been performed the previous autumn, as a contemporary stage-print record held by the Bibliothèque nationale de France makes clear. The familiar tale that Mucha was unexpectedly called to the printer during the Christmas holiday is presented by the Mucha Foundation as legend. The commission and the poster’s public effect need no embellished version of the story.^[5][6][7]

Bernhardt appears as a Byzantine noblewoman, holding a palm branch in a richly patterned costume. Mucha gives her a long, narrow frame and an almost motionless stance. The arch around her and the lettering above and below make the image both a portrayal of a stage role and a clear announcement of actress, play and theatre. At more than two metres high, the lithograph could make a strong impression on the street while inviting a closer look at dress, flowers and ornament.^[6]

Bernhardt liked the poster, and Mucha went on to make theatrical designs for her, including posters for six further productions. Their collaboration extended to stage and costume work. It gave the actress a public visual identity and gave Mucha an exceptionally visible client. The two careers helped one another, though the images belong to distinct plays and roles rather than a single interchangeable formula.^[5]

This was the beginning of an intense Paris period. The success of Gismonda increased demand for Mucha’s designs, but it did not erase the illustrator’s earlier life. The same habits of drawing, staging and working with printers that had served him before 1895 now reached a much larger audience. The Gismonda page looks closely at the poster; Sarah Bernhardt’s page follows the wider partnership.

His standing in Paris became measurable in 1897. The Mucha Museum's Czech chronology records a February solo exhibition at the Bodinière gallery with 107 works, followed by a May Salon des Cent presentation of 448.^[20] Those counts belong to two exhibitions, not to a count of unique works made that year. The Mucha Foundation's Czech catalogue says that six issues of La Plume, the magazine associated with the Salon, were devoted to his work around the 1897 solo exhibition.^[21] Exhibition, periodical and poster publicity worked together: the artist who had made Bernhardt visible in the streets was now being presented to readers and gallery visitors as a subject in his own right.

The Bodinière exhibition also shows how his theatrical partnership helped introduce his work in another setting. The Mucha Foundation locates the gallery at 18 rue Saint-Lazare and identifies Bernhardt as the writer of the catalogue preface.^[1] Her contribution did not make the exhibition a Bernhardt performance: the catalogue presented a body of Mucha's work under his own name. A visitor who knew the actress from the theatre posters could now encounter the artist's wider output, while the larger Salon des Cent exhibition and its accompanying print publicity carried that recognition beyond the first gallery.

The Albertina holds a printed announcement for the June 1897 Salon exhibition, a colour lithograph issued by Affiches artistiques de la Plume and printed by F. Champenois.^[22] Its recorded 68.5 × 46 cm is the Vienna museum's sheet measurement, not a universal size for every impression. The May date in the Mucha Museum chronology and June wording on the poster mark a source difference to investigate rather than a reason to silently merge the two into one exact opening day. Together they document how an exhibition was publicised through the very print networks that underpinned Mucha's Paris career.^[20][22]

Posters, panels and the Paris workshop, 1896–1903

Mucha’s commercial work expanded through the late 1890s. He designed advertising posters, periodical covers, calendars and pictures for the home, working with publishers and printers including F. Champenois. A poster for JOB rolling papers in 1896 used a more restless figure than Gismonda: the woman’s hair, tobacco smoke and repeated brand monograms turn across the page. Mucha later made a second JOB design in 1898, a reminder that a familiar product name can cover different works.^[8][9]

Decorative panels were another important development. These printed images generally omitted an advertising message and were sold to be displayed indoors. The first Seasons series appeared in 1896; The Flowers, The Arts, The Times of the Day, The Precious Stones and The Moon and the Stars followed. The images were widely distributed, and their series structure let buyers enjoy one panel or compare a set. Mucha’s interest in art accessible to ordinary households found a practical form in this publishing system.^[8]

He also worked beyond the flat printed sheet. Designs for jewellery, utensils, packaging and interiors led to a collaboration with the Paris jeweller Georges Fouquet. Mucha designed jewellery and a scheme for Fouquet’s boutique. The design handbook Documents décoratifs, published in 1902, offered patterns that other makers could adapt; Figures décoratives followed in 1905. These projects show an artist thinking about how a line might become an object, a room or a model for someone else’s craft.^[3]

In 1899 Mucha published Le Pater, an illustrated treatment of the Lord’s Prayer. The book’s seven verse groups combine decorated text with allegorical images. Its darker, more meditative pages show that the Paris years held more than commercial optimism. Mucha could use the same skills of sequence and ornament for an explicitly philosophical project.^[10]

The turn of the century also brought a commission for the Bosnia-Herzegovina pavilion at the Paris Exposition of 1900. Mucha travelled in the Balkans in preparation. According to the Foundation’s account, this work helped him form the idea of a large painted history of Slavic peoples. It was an ambition he could not yet finance, and it became one reason for his repeated journeys to America.^[2][11]

An inventory of Mucha papers at the National Gallery Prague adds a practical link between those journeys and his later method. It records his use of photographs from a pre-revolutionary Russian visit as working material for the Epic, and describes his trip through the Balkans with a camera before painting the Bosnia-Herzegovina pavilion decoration. The photograph was neither a replacement for drawing nor simply a souvenir: it could carry places, clothing and poses back to a studio where an extensive composition was built.^[18]

The American years and Charles R. Crane, 1904–1909

Mucha first visited the United States in 1904. During the following six years he made five visits, moving between commissions, teaching and the search for support for his projected Slav Epic. Portrait painting offered the possibility of income and social introductions. The American period was therefore neither a single move nor simply a holiday from Paris: it was a sustained effort to make a different scale of work possible.^[1][11]

His teaching can be checked against records made at the time. The Art Institute of Chicago’s 1906–07 annual report says Mucha gave ten lectures on composition and colour in October and November and led drawing-from-life classes. The school reported an average attendance of 446 for the lectures, delivered through an interpreter. It praised his command of academic drawing while noting his emphasis on flowing line rather than rigid figure construction. The following year’s report records further classes and lectures. These accounts show a practising artist explaining the organisation of a picture to students while pursuing his own commissions. They also make the American years more concrete than a narrative focused only on fundraising.^[12][13]

On 10 June 1906 Mucha married Marie Chytilová, known as Maruška, at the Church of St Roch in Prague; the couple then returned to the United States. Their daughter Jaroslava was born in New York in 1909. Their son Jiří was born in Prague in 1915. Family members later appeared in or assisted with work, especially the large paintings. The family story is part of the studio story, though it should not turn every posed figure into an identified relative.^[1][4][18]

The American businessman Charles Richard Crane became crucial to the Slav Epic. Mucha had met him earlier; by 1908 Crane had commissioned portraits of his daughters, including Josephine Crane Bradley as the figure Slavia. In 1909 he promised financial support for the historical cycle. Patronage supplied more than money: it gave Mucha the freedom to reserve years for research, studies and vast canvases. Crane’s interest in Slavic culture and politics also belonged to the context of the project.^[1][11][14]

Prague, Zbiroh and the Slav Epic, 1910–1928

Mucha returned to Prague in 1910. He began a decorative programme for the Lord Mayor’s Hall in the Municipal House and rented a studio at Zbiroh Castle in western Bohemia. The spacious studio allowed him to work on canvases far larger than the posters that had made him famous. The Municipal House commission and the Epic were different projects, yet both placed Czech and Slavic history before a public audience.^[1][11]

The National Gallery Prague archive inventory names Václav Matoušek as an assistant employed during the Zbiroh work who also learned painting with Mucha. This is a useful reminder that a twenty-canvas cycle was a sustained studio undertaking, not a sequence of isolated inspirations. The archive's surviving Mucha papers are described as modest and scattered, assembled from several later purchases and transfers. Such a record helps explain why some episodes of his life are much better documented than others.^[18]

The Slav Epic consists of twenty paintings made between 1911 and 1926. The Foundation describes ten canvases devoted to Czech subjects and ten to other Slavic histories. Mucha gathered visual and historical material, used studies and models, and staged figures for a series that reached from an imagined early homeland to the political hopes of the twentieth century. Its first completed canvas, The Slavs in Their Original Homeland, dates from 1912; its last, The Apotheosis of the Slavs, from 1926.^[11][15][16]

Mucha’s historical vision was selective and symbolic. A painting of a battle, religious preacher or national turning point is not a neutral record of the event. He organised episodes to convey ideas about struggle, learning, independence and peace. This matters especially when the paintings address several peoples under the broad name “Slav.” They are best understood as an artist’s programme made in a specific political and cultural moment, not as a substitute for a history of each region.^[11]

The physical challenge of the cycle led Mucha to study more than historical subjects. The Foundation timeline records a 1913 visit to Versailles to examine how very large paintings could be hung and lit, and a research journey to Russia for material connected with the canvas on the abolition of serfdom. Later journeys in the Balkans and Greece informed other subjects. These movements show the Epic as a project of looking, staging and installation as well as painting. Mucha had to imagine how a spectator would stand before a canvas, how groups would be read across it, and how a sequence of huge works might be shown together.^[1]

The cycle absorbed time but did not consume every part of Mucha’s practice. His Prague civic work continued. After Czechoslovakia was founded in 1918, his designs appeared on the new state’s first postage stamps. Czech Post dates the first Hradčany issue to 18 December 1918 and identifies Mucha as its designer.^[26] The choice of Prague Castle for a small, circulating symbol put a recognisable Czech place into the daily transactions of a new state. The postal date also makes clear how quickly the commission followed independence, declared less than two months earlier.

Currency followed, amid the practical difficulty of separating the new republic's money from the former Austro-Hungarian currency. A Czech National Bank historical account explains that the late-1918 plans for Land Bank vouchers supplied motifs later adapted for state treasury notes. It credits Mucha with the reverse of the 10-crown note and designs used for the 20-, 100- and 500-crown notes in the first issue.^[27] The bank's closer study of the 20-crown note narrows this broad attribution: Mucha drew its reverse legionary portrait, while two earlier portraits of his were reused on the face, whose overall graphic arrangement is probably by the Austrian designer Rudolf Junk.^[30] Other artists and engravers worked on the issue, which was printed in several domestic and foreign workshops. Mucha's contribution should therefore be seen within an urgent, collaborative programme of currency production, rather than described as the sole design of the republic's money.

The first completed definitive note was the 100-crown denomination, placed in circulation on 7 July 1919.^[27] Its printed date, 15 April 1919, is a date on the note, not its release date. The Czech National Bank describes the reverse as containing two idealised, scarf-covered heads based on Mucha's wife Marie, alongside linden branches and values written in six languages. The design joined family likeness, plant ornament and the multilingual reality of the state on a piece of paper intended to change hands. Its final production involved separate printing plates made in Prague and Vienna and printing in Prague. The bank judges it artistically accomplished but technically simple, and records its replacement by a more secure design from 1920.^[28]

Mucha's work on currency continued after the first issue. The bank attributes the 1929 50-crown note to him and identifies it as the first banknote prepared and manufactured entirely in the National Bank of Czechoslovakia's own printing works.^[29][31] Its production history marks a change from the hurried, dispersed printing of 1919. The bank's visitor centre notes that a heart becomes the central motif on its reverse, held up by a young woman in folk dress beneath a sprig of linden leaves. That description connects Mucha's long-standing ornamental language to the bank's later technical capacity without treating the folk motifs as a code of unverified hidden symbols.^[32]

These were everyday objects seen and handled on a scale no unique canvas could reach. Yet their public function also set limits: denominations had to remain legible, and stamps and notes had to be reproducible in great numbers. Mucha's work for the republic drew on the same attention to figure, ornament and print that had supported his Paris career, now applied to objects used without entering an exhibition.^{[1][17][26][27]}

The move from Paris advertising to public symbols in a new republic was a change in commission and context, not a change from design to some supposedly higher art. Mucha’s ability to join figure, ornament and readable sign had long been useful to publishers and businesses. In Prague it could serve civic institutions. The Slav Epic guide follows the twenty canvases in detail; the jewellery and design guide traces how his drawing entered other materials.

In 1928 Mucha and Crane formally presented the twenty-canvas Slav Epic to the City of Prague. The gift did not settle the question of how the huge cycle would be housed and displayed. Its later exhibition and storage history is part of the work’s public life, but it should be followed through dated records rather than reduced to a single current venue.^[1][11]

The question of a permanent home had been present almost from the start. The Czech Academy of Sciences' exhibition database records a 1909 municipal promise to build a pavilion after Mucha and Crane donated the completed cycle. It also describes the criticism that followed architect Antonín Balšánek's 1919 proposal for a pavilion on Petřín Hill: some modernist artists objected to the priority given to Mucha while permanent displays for other Czech painters were lacking. This was a debate about public space, artistic standing and civic spending, as well as about the paintings themselves. It helps explain why a gift intended for a broad public did not automatically gain the permanent setting its makers envisaged.^[25]

The cycle had already been seen in stages. Five canvases were shown at Prague’s Klementinum in 1919 and later travelled to the United States. An Art Institute of Chicago booklet for its 17 June–19 July 1920 exhibition says eleven of the planned twenty had then been finished and five were displayed there, on the walls at the head of the grand staircase. Its descriptions of individual subjects show how Mucha's historical message was being explained to an American audience while the series was still unfinished. The same booklet presents the future gift to Prague as a joint project of Mucha and Crane. Works later appeared at the Brooklyn Museum alongside paintings, drawings and posters. In 1928 nineteen Epic canvases were exhibited at Prague’s Trade Fair Palace. The twentieth, The Oath of Omladina, was left out because it was unfinished. These displays placed the historical project before different audiences while reminding viewers that the series had a making and exhibition history of its own.^[1][19]

Later projects and the final years, 1929–1939

Completion of the Epic did not end Mucha’s work. His stained-glass window for St Vitus Cathedral in Prague was installed in 1931, but the work had a longer design history than that single date suggests. Slavia Mutual Insurance Bank financed the commission, and the finished window went into the New Archbishop’s Chapel in the north nave. It centres on the young St Wenceslas and his grandmother St Ludmila, with episodes from the lives of Cyril and Methodius around them. The Mucha Foundation also identifies the figure of Slavia beneath Christ as a reference to the sponsoring bank. In this public commission, religious narrative and the identity of a modern patron share the same architectural setting.^[23][24]

The cathedral’s own account says Mucha had to revise an initial design after it drew criticism for its folk decoration and perceived pagan character. It names the Prague glass painter Jan Veselý as the person who installed the window in 1931, and distinguishes Mucha’s approach as painting on glass from the glass-mosaic methods used for neighbouring windows. Those details make the work a collaboration and a negotiated cathedral commission, rather than a design simply transferred from the artist’s studio to finished glass. The sources establish the installation year, but do not support treating 1931 as the date when Mucha first received the assignment.^[23][24]

A mural for the Nymburk City Savings Bank followed in 1932. Both commissions show his continued interest in large images made for public interiors, with demands different from those of a canvas.^[1]

His late career still crossed borders. The Mucha Foundation records that he and his family lived in Nice for two years from 1932, even while Prague projects continued.^[1] It also dates the installation of The Song, his mural for Prague's Hlahol choir, to 1934; the project had begun in 1921. This long span from conception to placement is another reminder that a mural's date may refer to its installation rather than the start of the artist's work. The Hlahol setting connected painting with a performing institution, echoing Mucha's earlier interest in art made for places where people gathered.^[1]

As war threatened Europe, Mucha considered further large-scale paintings. The Foundation dates The Light of Hope, a dark image with a figure protecting a light, to 1933 and describes it as a study for an unrealised project. In 1936 he began a projected triptych known as The Three Ages: Love, Wisdom and Reason. It remained unfinished. The surviving studies and separate compositions should be treated as evidence of a plan in development, not as three completed monumental paintings.^[1]

Mucha became ill in 1938. After the German occupation of Prague in 1939, the Gestapo arrested and questioned him; he was released. The Foundation records his death on 14 July 1939 and his burial at Vyšehrad in Prague. These events need to be stated plainly. The record supports their sequence, but it does not allow every medical or emotional consequence to be reconstructed from a distance.^[1][2]

The artist died ten days before his seventy-ninth birthday. His life had crossed the Austrian Empire, the first Czechoslovak republic and the beginning of its occupation. The shifts in political setting do not map neatly onto changes of medium, but they help explain why posters, civic designs and paintings could all be forms of public address for him.

A life seen through the work

The famous Paris posters are easy to encounter today, often as cropped images separated from their printed sheets. The biography restores their setting: the earlier theatre apprenticeship, years of illustration, a working relationship with Bernhardt, and the printers and publishers who made wide circulation possible. It also follows the ambitions that the poster image alone cannot show: the reflective pages of Le Pater, designs for crafted objects, teaching in America, Czech civic commissions and the Slav Epic.^{[3][5][8][10][11]}

Mucha’s career did not divide cleanly into a commercial youth and a serious later life. He pursued different kinds of art for different audiences, and the work of design remained part of his practice. Looking from a Paris street poster to a Prague banknote or an immense historical canvas reveals changes of purpose and scale, alongside a persistent concern with how an image might speak to many people.

For individual works, begin with Gismonda, the 1896 JOB poster and Le Pater. Photography and working methods opens a view of the studio, while the paintings and the Slav Epic follow the large projects. The Alphonse Mucha overview brings these strands together by medium and theme.

Watch: Alphonse Mucha

Follow Mucha’s work from Art Nouveau Paris to his later Czech projects.

Alphonse Mucha: Plongez dans l’Art nouveau !

Grand Palais

A French museum introduction to Mucha’s Art Nouveau years, poster work and decorative language.

Watch on YouTube

▶01 · Art Nouveau overviewAlphonse Mucha: Plongez dans l’Art nouveau !Grand Palais▶02 · Paris and designAlphonse Mucha: Art Nouveau in ParijsKunstmuseum Den Haag▶03 · Prague and the Slav EpicPrague’s Art Nouveau, Mucha, and the Slav EpicRick Steves Classroom Europe

Artworks directory

292 artworks

Search artworks Medium All media Drawing Painting Reset

Name	Date	Medium
'Accept Love and Enthusiasm from Your Son, Mother of the Holy Nation': study for the mural 'By Own Strength III' at the Lord Mayor's Hall, Obecní Dům, Prague	1910-1911	Pencil and charcoal on canvas
'By force towards freedom, with love towards unity!': study for the mural 'By Own Strength II' at the Lord Mayor's Hall, Obecní Dům, Prague	1910-1911	Pencil and charcoal on canvas
'The Passing Wind Takes Youth Away': design for a fan and the façade of the 'Pavilion of Man' (unrealised)	1899	Colour lithograph
'Through humiliated and tortured, you will live again, my country!': study for the mural 'By Own Strength II' at the Lord Mayor's Hall, Obecní Dům, Prague	1910-1911	Pencil and charcoal on canvas
1918-1928: Poster for the 10th Anniversary of the Independence of the Republic of Czechoslovakia	1928	Colour lithograph
6th Sokol Festival	1912	Colour lithograph
8th Sokol Festival	1925	Colour lithograph
After the Battle of Grunwald	1924	egg tempera on canvas
After the Battle of Vitkov Hill	1923	egg tempera on canvas
Age of Love	1936–1938
Age of Reason	1936–1938
Age of Wisdom	1936–1938
Amants	1895	Colour lithograph
Apotheosis of the Slavs	1926	Egg tempera on canvas
As Hamlet	1899	colour lithograph
Au Quartier Latin	1898	Magazine cover
Banknotes of Czechoslovakia, designed by Mucha: 500 crown; 50 Crown; 10 Crown	1929	Banknotes
Bieres de la Meuse	1897	Colour lithograph
Biscuits Champagne Lefevre Utile	1896	Colour lithograph
Biscuits Lefevre Utile	1896 design for 1897 calendar; Foundation object/Carnavalet 1897	Colour lithograph
Blessed are the Pure in Heart	1906	Printed magazine illustration
Bleu Deschamps	1903 (deposit)	Colour lithograph
Bosnia & Herzegovina Pavilion - illustration featured in 'Le Figaro Illustré' (1 March 1900)	1900	Reproduction from Le Figaro Illustré after watercolour original
Bosnia-Herzegovina Pavilion: cartoon for the mural 'The Roman Period and the Arrival of the Slavs'	1899-1900	ink and crayon on paper
Bosnia-Herzegovina Pavilion: fragment of the upper frieze featuring Ivo and Anica, characters from Bosnian legends	1899-1900	tempera and watercolour on canvas
Bosnian Legends: Death of Hasanaga's Bride	1899	Charcoal on paper
Bosnian Legends: Murcia - The Plague Lady	1899	Charcoal on paper
Bosnian Pavilion Restaurant at the Paris Exhibition 1900: design for the menu	1900	Pencil and watercolour on paper
Boutique Fouquet (interior design)	1901	Shop interior design
Boutique Fouquet: sketches of the shop's signboard and decorative details	c.1900	Pencil, ink and watercolour on paper
Box for Lefèvre-Utile biscuits: Gaufrettes Vanille	c.1900	Tin box covered with lithographed label
Box for Lefèvre-Utile biscuits: Madère	c.1900	Tin box covered with lithographed label
Brightness of the Day	1899	Colour lithograph
Broach with Pendant	1900	Gold, ivory, mother-of-pearl and semi-precious stones
Byzantine Head - The Blonde	1897	Colour lithograph
Byzantine Heads (pair)	1897	Colour lithograph
Byzantine Heads: Brunette	1897	Colour lithograph
Bénédictine	1898 (BnF deposit); Hamburg 1899; MNAC 1896 or 1898	Colour lithograph
Champagne Ruinart	1896	Colour lithograph
Chocolat Ideal	before or in 1897 (catalogue conflict)	Colour lithograph
Chocolat Masson (1897 calendar)	1896–1897	Colour lithograph
Choirboys at Petrov Church, Brno	1905	Watercolour on cardboard
Cloches de Noel	1900	Illustrated book
Comedy: study for a mural for the German Theatre, New York	1908	Oil on canvas
Cours Mucha: poster advertising Mucha's art classes held at the Académie Colarossi, Paris	1900	colour lithograph
Creative Force - Jan z Pernštýna: study for a pendentive of the Lord Mayor’s Hall, Obecní Dům, Prague	1910-1911	Oil on canvas
Crucifixion	c.1868	Pencil, crayon and watercolour on paper
Cycles Perfecta	1897 or 1902 (catalogue conflict)	Colour lithograph
Dance	1898	Colour lithograph
Dead Couple - Abandoned	c.1899-1900	Charcoal and pastel on blue paper
Defense of Sziget against the Turks by Nicholas Zrinsky	1914	egg tempera on canvas
Design for a champagne poster	c. 1896	Charcoal and pastel on paper
Design for a display stand at the Paris Exhibition 1900	c.1899-1900	Pencil and wash on paper
Design for Champagne Ruinart	c. 1896	Pencil, watercolour and gold leaf on paper
Design for the cover of the magazine 'Fantaz'	1882	Ink and watercolour on paper
Design for the heading of the cover of the magazine 'Krokodil'	1885	Pen and ink on cardboard
Design for the poster for the Mucha Exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, January-February 1921	1920	Pen and ink and watercolour on paper
Designs for cutlery	c.1900	Charcoal and white on card
Designs for tableware	c.1900	Charcoal, coloured pencil and white on card
Diadem for 'La princesse lointaine'	1895	metal and pearls
Diploma of Ivančice: Mock diploma honouring a local celebrity, with illustration of the first line of 'May', a poem by Karel Hynek Mácha	1882	Pen and ink and watercolour on paper
Documents décoratifs: designs for a watch and accessories (unused)	1901-1902	Pencil, ink and white on paper
Documents décoratifs: final study for Plate 25, featuring studies of lily	1901-1902	Pencil on paper
Documents décoratifs: final study for Plate 43	1901-1902	Pencil, ink and wash, heightened with white on paper
Documents décoratifs: final study for Plate 49	1901-1902	Pencil and white on paper
Documents décoratifs: final study for Plate 50	1901-1902	Pencil and white on paper
Documents décoratifs: final study for Plate 60	1901-1902	Pencil, ink and wash, heightened with white on paper
Documents décoratifs: final study for Plate 63	1901-1902	Pencil and white on paper
Documents décoratifs: final study for Plate 67	1901-1902	Pencil and white on paper
Documents décoratifs: final study for Plate 71	1901-1902	Pencil and white on paper
Documents décoratifs: final study for Plate 72	1901-1902	Pencil and wash, heightened with white on paper
Documents décoratifs: line drawing for Plate 33, featuring lily motifs	1901-1902	Pencil, pen and ink on paper
Documents décoratifs: Plate 54	1902	Lithograph
Dreaming of Freedom: study for a Panel of the Small Reception Room at the Lord Mayor’s Hall, Obecní Dům, Prague	1910-1911	Pen and ink and watercolour on paper
Dusk	1899	Colour lithograph
Evening	1899	Colour lithograph
F. Champenois (Rêverie imprint)	1898	Colour lithograph
F. Guillot-Pelletier calendar (1898)	1897–1898	Colour lithograph
Feather	1899	Colour lithograph
Figures décoratives: final study for Plate 2	1904-1905	Pencil and white on paper
Figures décoratives: final study for Plate 3	1904-1905	Pencil and white on paper
Figures décoratives: final study for Plate14	1904-1905	Pencil with white on paper
Figures décoratives: sketch study for Plate14	1904-1905	Blue pencil on paper
Flirt Lefevre Utile	1899 (Foundation design); BnF legal deposit 1900	Colour lithograph
Flower	1897	Colour lithograph
Flower: final study for decorative panel	1897	Pencil, ink and watercolour on paper
France Embraces Bohemia	1918	oil on canvas
Fruit	1897	Colour lithograph
Georges Fouquet (1858-1929), Paris, after design by Mucha: Ornamental Chain with pendants	1900	Gold, enamel, fresh-water pearls, mother of pearl and semi-precious stones
Georges Fouquet (1858-1929), Paris, after Mucha design: 'Peacock' Ring (Exhibited at the Paris Exhibition 1900)	1900	Opal and gold
Girl Weeping	c.1899-1900	Black chalk and pastel on paper
Girl with Loose Hair and Tulips	1920	Oil on canvas
Gismonda	1894	Colour lithograph
Head of a Girl, statue for the stand of the Houbigant Perfumery at the Paris Exhibition 1900	1900	Bronze, silver and parcel gilt
Head of Sarah Bernhardt: Study for 'Lorenzaccio'	1896	Pencil on paper
Heather from Coastal Cliffs	1902	Colour lithograph
Heidsieck & Co	1901	Colour lithograph
Holy Mount Athos	1926	Egg tempera on canvas
Ilsée, Princesse de Tripoli	1897	Illustrated book
In the Desert: Study for an illustration for the Světozor magazine	1889	Pencil, watercolour and gouache on paper
Incantation (Salammbô)	1897	Lithograph
Independence - Jiří z Poděbrad: study for a pendentive of the Lord Mayor’s Hall, Obecní Dům, Prague	1910-1911	Oil on canvas
Interior and furniture designs	c.1900	Pencil on paper
Interior of Boutique Fouquet: design for a wall-mounted display cabinet with statuette and mirror	c.1900	Pencil on paper
Interior of Boutique Fouquet: design for the fireplace with statuettes, mirror, and the ornamental details of the wall	c.1900	Pencil and watercolour on cardboard
Interior of Boutique Fouquet: sketches of the fireplace with statue, mirror, display cabinet, and the ornamental details of the wall	c.1900	Pencil, pen and ink on paper
Ivy	1901	Colour lithograph
Jan Milic of Kromeriz	1916	egg tempera on canvas
Jaroslava and Jiří, the Artist’s Children	1918	Oil on canvas
JOB poster	1896	Colour lithograph
Judgement of Paris (calendar for Vieillemard printing company)	1895	Colour lithograph
Justice - Master Jan Hus: study for a pendentive of the Lord Mayor's Hall, Obecní dům, Prague	1910-1911	Oil on canvas
L'Annee Qui Vient	1897	red chalk on paper
L'Illustration magazine - cover for Christmas 1896/1897	1896	Magazine cover
L'Illustré Soleil du Dimanche	1897	Magazine cover
La Dame aux Camélias: designs for cover and interior of special programme	1896	Pencil and watercolour on paper
La Nature	1899-1900	Bronze and amethyst
La Plume	1897	Magazine cover
La Samaritaine	1897	colour lithograph
Lance Parfum Rodo	1896; Albertina print c. 1900	Colour lithograph
Laurel	1901	Colour lithograph
Le Monde Illustré	1900	Magazine cover
Le Pater	1899	Illustrated book
Le Pater: early study for the 1st allegorical scene 'Our Father who art in Heaven' (1899) (Mucha Foundation object 300)	1899	Pencil on paper
Le Pater: early study for the 1st allegorical scene 'Our Father who art in Heaven' (1899) (Mucha Foundation object 302)	1899	Pastel on paper
Le Pater: study for the 6th allegorical scene 'Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors'	1899	Charcoal and ink wash on paper
Lefevre Utile	1904	Advertisement
Leslie Carter	1908	Colour lithograph
Letem Českým Světem	1898	Printed book
Lorenzaccio	1896	Colour lithograph
Luchon poster (attributed to Mucha)	1895	Colour lithograph
Madonna of the Lilies	1905	Tempera on canvas
Master Jan Hus Preaching at the Bethlehem Chapel	1916	egg tempera on canvas
Maude Adams	1908	Lithograph, hand-coloured in watercolour and gouache
Maude Adams as Joan of Arc	1909	Oil on canvas
Medea	1898	Colour lithograph
Menu for the Bosnian Pavilion Restaurant at the Paris Exhibition 1900	1900	Colour lithograph
Militancy - Jan Žižka: study for a pendentive of the Lord Mayor's Hall, Obecní dům, Prague	1910-1911	Oil on canvas
Military Camp in Winter, near a City on Fire	c.1899-1900	Pastel on paper
Moet et Chandon	1899	Colour lithograph
Monaco Monte Carlo	1897	Colour lithograph
Moon	1902
Moravian Teachers' Choir	1911	Colour lithograph
Morning Alphonse Mucha Painting / AlphonseMucha.org	1899	Colour lithograph
Morning Star	1902	Colour lithograph
Moët & Chandon White Star	1899	Colour lithograph
Mrs Mucha’s Necklace	1906	gold, enamel and semi-precious stones
Mural for the Bosnia-Herzegovina Pavilion: The Roman Period and the Arrival of the Slavs	1900	tempera and watercolour on canvas
Murals by Mucha in the Lord Mayor's Hall, Obecní Dům (Municipal House), Prague (1910-1911)
Music	1898	Colour lithograph
Nativity	c. 1934	oil on canvas
Nestle's Food for Infants	1897	Colour lithograph
Night	1899	Colour lithograph
Nude on a Rock	1898-1899	Bronze
Official Banquet of the Paris Exhibition 1900: design for the menu featuring a fashionable woman wearing a Mucha-style jewellery	1900	Pencil, gouache and wash on grey paper
Ornamental motifs designed for 'Combinaisons Ornementales se Multipliant à l'Infini à l'Aide du Miroir' (1901)	c.1900-1901	Blue and red pencil on paper
Packaging for 'Savon Mucha Violette'	1906	Colour lithograph
Packaging for Lefèvre-Utile biscuits: Boudoir	1901	Colour lithograph
Page's Costume: study for an illustration for 'Le Costume au Théâtre'	1890	Pencil and watercolour on cardboard
Painting	1898	Colour lithograph
Peonies	1897–1898	Ink and watercolour
Petr Chelcicky at Vodnany	1918	egg tempera on canvas
Poetry	1898	Colour lithograph
Portrait of Jaroslava	c.1927-1935	Oil on canvas
Portrait of Josephine Crane Bradley as Slavia	1908	Oil and tempera on canvas
Portrait of Marie Chytilová (Maruška), Mucha's Future Wife	1903	pastel on paper
Portrait of Mucha's Sister, Angela	c.1880	Oil on canvas
Portrait of Mucha's Sister, Anna	c.1885	Oil on canvas
Portrait of Mucha's Son, Jiří	1925	Oil on canvas
Portrait of Mucha's Wife, Maruška	1908/17	Oil on canvas
Portrait of Woman	c. mid 1910s - 1925	Blue pastel on grey paper
Poster for 'Hommage Respectueux de Nestlé' (the Nestlé Company's tribute to Queen Victoria's 60th Jubilee)	1897	Colour lithograph
Poster for 'Imprimerie Cassan Fils'	1896	Colour lithograph
JOB poster (1898)	1898	Colour lithograph
Poster for 'La Dame aux Camélias'	1896	Colour lithograph
Poster for 'La Tosca'	1899	Colour lithograph
Poster for 'Regional Exhibition at Ivančice 1913'	1912	Colour lithograph
Poster for 'The Slav Epic Exhibition, Brno, 1930'	1928-1930	Colour lithograph
Poster for 'Waverley Cycles'	1898	Colour lithograph
Poster for the 'Lottery of the Union of Southwestern Moravia'	1912	Colour lithograph
Poster for the Austrian Pavilion at the Paris Exhibition 1900	1900	Colour lithograph
Prague Subjugated: study for a Panel of the Small Reception Room at the Lord Mayor’s Hall, Obecní Dům, Prague	1910-1911	Pen and ink and watercolour on paper
Primrose	1899	Colour lithograph
Primrose and Feather (paired image)	1899	Colour lithographs (paired image)
Princess Hyacinth (Princezna Hyacinta)	1911	Colour lithograph
Print proof for the Biscuits Lefèvre-Utile tin	1899	Lithograph
Reverie	1898	Colour lithograph
Russia Restituenda [Russia Must Recover]	1922	Colour lithograph
Salome	1897	Colour lithograph
Salon des Cent	1896	Colour lithograph
Salon of the Hundred	1897	Colour lithograph
Sarah Bernhardt - La Princesse Lointaine - Lefevre Utile	1903	Colour lithograph
Sarah Bernhardt as La Princesse Lointaine: poster for 'La Plume' magazine	1897	Colour lithograph
Sarah Bernhardt in the role of the Duc de Reichstadt in L’Aiglon	1900	Pencil on paper
Sarah Bernhardt: study of her full-standing figure	c.1896	Pen and ink on paper
Savonnerie de Bagnolet calendar	1898 (calendar)	Printed advertising calendar
Self-portrait (1899)	1899	Oil on board
Self-portrait (1907)	1907	Blue and white crayon on blue Ingres paper
Self-portrait, sketching in his apartment, Paris	late 1880s	oil on canvas
Sketches of flowers for Documents décoratifs	c.1900-1901	Pen and ink on paper
Slavia insurance poster	1907	Poster
Slavs in their Original Homeland	1912	Egg tempera on canvas
Snake Bracelet with a Ring	1899	Gold, enamel, opal, ruby and diamond
Société Populaire des Beaux Arts	1897	Colour lithograph
Song of Bohemia	1918	oil on canvas
St. Vitus Cathedral Stained-glass Window, Prague: final design for the central panels, featuring SS Cyril and Methodius	1931	Ink and watercolour on paper
St. Vitus Cathedral Stained-glass Window, Prague: final design for the central panels, featuring St. Ludmila	1931	Ink and watercolour on paper
St. Vitus Cathedral Stained-glass Window, Prague: final design for the central panels, featuring St. Wenceslas (Duke of Bohemia) kneeling next to his Grandmother, St. Ludmila	1931	Ink and watercolour on paper
St.Vitus Cathedral Stained-glass Window, Prague: final design for the bottom left panels	1931	Ink and watercolour on paper
St.Vitus Cathedral Stained-glass Window, Prague: final design for the bottom right panels	1931	Ink and watercolour on paper
Stained-glass Window designed by Mucha at St. Vitus Cathedral, Prague	Early 1930s	N/A
Study for 'The Age of Reason'	1936-1938	Pencil and watercolour on paper
Study for 'The Slav Epic cycle' No.19: The Abolition of Serfdom in Russia	1913-1914	Watercolour and gouache on paper
Study for 'The Slav Epic' cycle No.14: The Sacrifice at Szigetvár by Nikola Zrinski	c.1913-1914	Photographed drawings stuck together, tinted with watercolour and gouache
Study for 'The Slav Epic' cycle No.17: The Holy Mount Athos (1926)	c.1925-26	Charcoal heightened with white on cardboard
Study for 'The Slav Epic' cycle No.18: The Oath of Omladina under the Slavic Linden Tree	c.1925-1926	Pencil and watercolour on paper
Study for 'The Slav Epic' cycle No.1: The Slavs in Their Original Homeland (1912)	c.1910-1912	Oil on canvas
Study for 'The Slav Epic' cycle No.2: The Celebration of Svantovít	c.1910-1912	Oil on canvas
Study for 'The Slav Epic' cycle No.7: Jan Milíč of Kroměříž	c.1915-1916	Oil on canvas
Study for 'The Slav Epic' cycle No.9: Master Jan Hus Preaching at the Bethlehem Chapel. The Magic of the Word: Truth Prevails (1412).	c.1915-1916	Oil on canvas
Study for 'The Three Ages' triptych: Reason, Wisdom and Love [unfinished project]	1936-1938	Pencil and watercolour on paper
Study for 'Woman in the Wilderness' (c. 1922-1923) (Mucha Foundation object 315)	c. 1922-1923	oil on canvas
Study for 'Woman in the Wilderness' (c. 1922-1923) (Mucha Foundation object 316)	c. 1922-1923	oil on canvas
Study for Savon Notre Dame	c. 1896	pencil and watercolour on paper
Study for the poster 'Russia Restituenda [Russia Must Recover]'	1922	Pen and ink and watercolour on paper
Study of a Male Nude	1885-1887	Oil on canvas
The Abolition of Serfdom in Russia	1914	Egg tempera on canvas
The Arts (series)	1898	Colour lithograph
The Arts: study for 'Dance'	1898	Pencil and watercolour on paper
The Arts: study for 'Music'	1898	Pencil and watercolour on paper
The Arts: study for 'Painting'	1898	Pencil and watercolour on paper
The Arts: study for 'Poetry'	1898	Pencil and watercolour on paper
The Bohemian King Premysl Otakar II	1924	egg tempera on canvas
The Bulgarian Tsar Simeon	1923	egg tempera on canvas
The Burr McIntosh Monthly, 1907	1907	Magazine cover
The Celebration of Svantovit	1912	egg tempera on canvas
The Coronation of the Serbian Tsar Stefan Dusan as East Roman Emperor	1923	egg tempera on canvas
The Devil and Mr Twardowsky: study for an illustration for 'The Tale of Pan Twardowsky' (a variation of 'Faust')	c.1887-1888	Charcoal on paper
The Flowers (series)	1898	Colour lithographs
The Flowers: Carnation	1898	Colour lithograph
The Flowers: Iris	1898	Colour lithograph
The Flowers: Lily	1898	Colour lithograph
The Flowers: Rose	1898	Colour lithograph
The Hussite King Jiri of Podebrady	1923	Egg tempera on canvas
The Introduction of the Slavonic Liturgy	1912	egg tempera on canvas
The Last Days of Jan Amos Komensky (Comenius) in Naarden	1918	Egg tempera on canvas
The Light of Hope	1933	Oil on canvas
The Meeting at Krizky	1916	egg tempera on canvas
The Months (January-June)	1899	Colour lithograph
The Months (July-December)	1899	Colour lithograph
The Moon and the Stars (four-panel montage)	1902	Colour lithographs (four-panel montage)
The Moon and the Stars (series)	1902	Colour lithograph
The Moon and the Stars: study for 'The Evening Star'	1902	Ink and watercolour on paper
The Moon and the Stars: study for 'The Pole Star'	1902	Ink and watercolour on paper
The New York Daily News art supplement	1904	Printed art supplement
The Oath of Concord of the Slavs (unfinished)	1939	oil on canvas
The Oath of Omladina under the Slavic Linden Tree	1926, unfinished	Egg tempera on canvas
The Precious Stones (four-panel montage)	1900	Colour lithographs (four-panel montage)
The Precious Stones (series)	1900	Colour lithograph
The Precious Stones: Amethyst	1900	Colour lithograph
The Precious Stones: Emerald	1900	Colour lithograph
The Precious Stones: Ruby	1900	Colour lithograph
The Printing of the Bible of Kralice in Ivancice	1914	egg tempera on canvas
The Seasons (series)	1896	Colour lithograph
The Seasons (series) (1900)	1900	Colour lithograph
The Seasons (variation in screen format)	1896	Colour lithograph
The Seasons: Autumn (1896)	1896	Colour lithograph
The Seasons: Autumn (1900)	1900	Colour lithograph
The Seasons: Spring	1900	Colour lithograph
The Seasons: Spring (1896)	1896	Colour lithograph
The Seasons: Summer	1900	Colour lithograph
The Seasons: Summer (1896)	1896	Colour lithograph
The Seasons: Winter	1900	Colour lithograph
The Seasons: Winter (1896)	1896	Colour lithograph
The Slavonic Concord: study for the ceiling painting for the Lord Mayor's Hall, Obecní Dům, Prague	1910-1911	Oil on canvas
The Threat	1912	Colour lithograph
The Times of the Day (series)	1899	Colour lithograph
The West End Review	1897 (Foundation); 1898 promotional cover	Colour lithograph
Thistle from the Sands	1902	Colour lithograph
Théâtre de la Renaissance: design for poster advertising Sarah Bernhardt's theatre	c.1895	Pen and ink on paper
Tin for Lefèvre-Utile biscuits	1899	Circular tin with lid and handle; colour print on metal
Topaz	1900	Colour lithograph
Tragedy - study for a mural for the German theatre New York	1908	Oil and tempera on canvas
Trappistine Liquors	1897	colour lithograph
Wiener Chic	1905	Magazine cover
Woman in the Wilderness	1923	Oil on canvas
Woman masked in white head-scarf - study for the illustration of the Bosnia & Herzegovina Pavilion featured in 'Le Figaro Illustré' (1 March 1900)	1899	Pencil and wash heightened with white on paper
Woman with a Daisy - textile designed by Mucha	1900	Printed upholstery fabric
Zdenka Cerny	1913	Colour lithograph
Zodiac (La Plume calendar)	1896–97	Colour lithograph
Zodiac (textless decorative panel)	1896	Colour lithograph
‘At the sight of the two storks the owl rose.’ Study for an illustration for Contes de Grand-mères	1891	Watercolour and gouache on paper

Frequently Asked Questions

References

1. Mucha Foundation, “Alphonse Mucha Timeline.” View source.
2. Mucha Foundation, “Mucha at a glance.” View source.
3. Mucha Foundation, “Decorative designs,” collection overview. View source.
4. Mucha Foundation, “Studio, Models and Staged Photography,” thematic collection. View source.
5. Mucha Foundation, “Sarah Bernhardt,” thematic collection. View source.
6. Mucha Foundation, “Poster for ‘Gismonda’ (1894),” object record. View source.
7. Bibliothèque nationale de France, “Théâtre de la Renaissance: Gismonda, Act I, Scene VII,” 1894 print record. View source.
8. Mucha Foundation, “Art Posters,” thematic collection. View source.
9. Mucha Foundation, JOB poster (1896), object record. View source.
10. Mucha Foundation, “Le Pater (1899),” object record. View source.
11. Mucha Foundation, “Slav Epic,” thematic collection. View source.
12. Art Institute of Chicago, Twenty-eighth Annual Report, 1906–07, school report. View source.
13. Art Institute of Chicago, Twenty-ninth Annual Report, 1907–08, school report. View source.
14. Mucha Foundation, “Charles Crane,” patron biography. View source.
15. Mucha Foundation, “The Slav Epic, No. 1: The Slavs in Their Original Homeland (1912),” object record. View source.
16. Mucha Foundation, “The Slav Epic, No. 20: Apotheosis: Slavs for Humanity (1926),” object record. View source.
17. Mucha Foundation, “Banknotes of Czechoslovakia,” object record and context. View source.
18. National Gallery Prague Archive, Alfons Mucha: inventory of the personal papers, 2018, especially pp. 1–2. View source.
19. Art Institute of Chicago, Historical Paintings of the Slavic Nations by Alphonse Mucha, exhibition booklet, 17 June–19 July 1920. View source.
20. Mucha Museum, Prague, Czech artist chronology, entries for the 1897 Bodinière and Salon des Cent exhibitions. Museum chronology.
21. Mucha Foundation, Czech La Plume object record, on the 1897 solo exhibition and six magazine issues devoted to Mucha. Foundation record.
22. Albertina, Salon des Cent; Juin 1897, object DG2003/967; colour lithograph issued by Affiches artistiques de la Plume and printed by F. Champenois. Museum catalogue.
23. St Vitus Cathedral, “První Putování po katedrále roku zavítá do Nové arcibiskupské kaple,” Czech account by Ondřej Stříteský, on the sponsor, revision, glass painter and 1931 installation. Cathedral account.
24. Mucha Foundation, “Stained-glass Window designed by Mucha at St. Vitus Cathedral, Prague,” on the 1931 installation, subject and Slavia emblem. Foundation object record.
25. Institute of Art History, Czech Academy of Sciences, “Alphonse Mucha: The Slav Epic,” 1928 exhibition database entry, on the proposed permanent pavilion and its criticism. Exhibition record.
26. Czech Post / PostFila, 100 let Poštovního muzea, 2018 stamp-issue information sheet, p. 2, on the first Hradčany issue of 18 December 1918. Postal record.
27. Czech National Bank, Zahájení vydávání československých platidel, historical account in the 2019 commemorative-coin competition document, pp. 6–7. Bank publication.
28. Czech National Bank, “First definitive Czechoslovak 100-koruna treasury note,” note description and production history in its 2026 historical presentation. Bank record.
29. Czech National Bank, 2010 Mucha commemorative-coin announcement, summarising his 1919 denominations and 1929 50-crown note. Bank announcement.
30. Czech National Bank, “Sbohem padesátihaléři, sbohem dvacetikoruno! – část 5,” close account of the 1919 20-crown note's design and printing. Bank study.
31. Czech National Bank historical site, “Národní banka Československá,” on the 1929 50-crown note and the bank's printing works. Bank history.
32. Czech National Bank Visitor Centre, “Bankovky se symboly lásky a přátelství,” 2023, on the 1929 note's heart and linden motifs. Bank account.

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