What were Alphonse Mucha's models in real life: Captivating images in paintings and their prototypes in photographs

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Sensual and ephemeral, seductive and inaccessible, this is how the ladies of the fair sex appear before the viewer in the works of the genius Alphonse Mucha. His women are charming goddesses with luxurious hair, exuding languor and bliss. Their fleeting glances, careless movements, easy postures, graceful gestures - all this and much more was depicted by the artist with incredible accuracy, and all because he had his own special little secret - his passion for photography, which helped him succeed in his work.

Alphonse Mucha was born in Moravia. He was the second son of Ondrej Mucha, who had six children from two marriages. From his earliest years, Alphonse's artistic talent was evident. He learned to draw before he even learned to walk. His mother even tied a pencil around his neck so that he could draw while crawling on the floor. Very few of his early drawings have survived, although an example of an early design can still be seen in the church in Ivančice, where the young Alphonse carved a monogram of his initials on a pew.

Despite his talent, he was never able to get a place to study at the Prague Academy of Fine Arts. Instead, Alphonse took a job in court, where he dishonored himself by making cartoons of plaintiffs and defendants. Fate intervened in the form of an announcement about the admission of a decorator apprentice to Vienna. At the age of nineteen, he got his first job as a professional artist.

But the artist did not stay in Vienna for a long time, and after the theater in which he worked burned down, Alphonse decided to leave his future to the mercy of fate. He took a train to Moravia and got off when he ran out of money in Mikulov. Luck was on his side. The portraits that Alphonse painted in exchange for food and lodging caught the attention of Count Huen Belasi, a local landowner. The young artist received an order to paint frescoes from Count Huen and his brother Count Egon, who was so impressed by Alphonse's talent that he agreed to become his patron. The count followed the advice of a friend and agreed to sponsor Mucha to study at the Munich Academy of Arts for two years, and after that he agreed that Alphonse should continue his studies in Paris.

Mucha came to Paris in 1887. He was lucky to have the support of a wealthy patron, and had to enjoy that support for another three years. However, with the end of support for the Earl, times were much harder. Alphonse learned to survive on a diet of lentils and beans and began saving for a living by providing illustrations for various magazines and books. Thanks to his talent and efforts, he was soon able to establish himself as a successful and reliable illustrator.

But it was on the day of St. Stephen that fate once again smiled at the artist. Correcting proofs in the printing house, he could not even imagine what lay ahead of him.

Sarah Bernhardt, the star of the Parisian scene, called de Brungoff, a printing agent, with an immediate demand for a new poster for her production. But the typography artists were on vacation, so the agent had no choice but to turn to Mukha in despair. Divine Sarah's demand could not be ignored. And Alphonse enthusiastically took up the job. In the end, the result made a splash, causing a flurry of emotions among the crowd and collectors who even went to extreme measures to get them, even to the point that some of them went out at night and, using razors, cut off advertising posters depicting Sarah with shields.

Bernard was delighted and immediately offered Alphonse a five-year contract for the production of stage and costume sketches, as well as posters. At the same time, he signed an exclusive contract with Champenois for the production of commercial and decorative posters.

After such a breakthrough, Alphonse was firmly entrenched in the title of an outstanding representative of Parisian Art Nouveau.

Over the next ten years, he became one of the most popular and successful Parisian artists. Orders for theatrical posters, advertising posters, decorative panels, magazine covers, menus, postcards, calendars were poured in. Alphonse's designs for jewelry, cutlery, tableware, textiles, etc. were so in demand that he conceived of creating a “handbook for artisans” that would offer all the samples needed to create an Art Nouveau lifestyle. Documents Decoratifs is an encyclopedia of his decorative works. He also spent more and more time teaching, first at the Colarossi Academy and then, with Whistler, at the Carmen Academy.

Alphonse received an order from the Austrian government to design the interior of the Bosnia and Herzegovina pavilion, which was to be part of the 1900 Paris International Exhibition. As part of his training, he traveled to the Balkans to collect impressions and make sketches. It took eighteen months to complete the work of the commission, during which he nurtured the idea of a project that was to become an All-Slavic epic.

But how can this goal be achieved? Despite his commercial success, Alphonse did not have significant savings. He decided that he would have to reconsider his life and leave Paris in order to try his luck in America. It is possible that this decision was influenced by the example of Sarah, who had a number of very successful American tours. American fans in Paris also assured him that he would be able to replenish his moneybox well as a secular portrait painter.

Ultimately, the American dream was not as easy as promised. Alphonse spent most of his ten years in America, cherishing a dream that could only be achieved with substantial sponsorship. But those were also happy years. He married Maria Khitilova, a beautiful Czech woman twenty years younger than him, and soon they had a daughter, Yaroslav, and a few years later their son Jiri was born.

And in the end his decision was justified when Charles Crane, an American millionaire with a love for the Slavic people, agreed to fund the Slav Epic.

Alphonse returned to Bohemia in 1910. He devoted most of the rest of his life to the creation of twenty paintings that make up the Slavic epic. These monumental paintings, some of which are six by eight meters in size, are dedicated to more than a thousand years of Slavic history, divided between specifically Czech themes and those of other Slavic peoples. The canvases were completed between 1912 and 1926, and in 1928 Mucha and Charles Crane officially donated the Slavic epic to the city of Prague. One of the conditions for the gift was that the city was to provide a suitable building for the permanent exhibition, but the date was not specified in the contract. Therefore, the canvases were exhibited at exhibitions in Prague, Brno and Plzen, after which they were rolled up and deposited. During the Second World War, the canvases were hidden and kept for almost thirty years, until, finally, through the efforts of the inhabitants of the Moravian town of Moravsky Krumlov, located not far from the artist's birthplace, restoration work on the canvases began. The entire Slavic epic cycle was finally placed on permanent exhibition in the castle of the Moravian Krumlov.

It is also worth noting the fact that Alphonse did not disdain photography, which he became interested in at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century.

He had two cameras in his arsenal for photographs and with renewed enthusiasm he began to experiment, filming models in theatrical surroundings, using draperies and jewelry. Interestingly, the photographer preferred to improvise during filming and was guided by inspiration, creating works for the future, and not for a specific project.

There were many models in his studio: from writers and poets to socialite and ordinary pretty girls, willingly posing in front of the camera. Through photography, the artist tried to immerse himself in the plot as deeply as possible and display in his works the atmosphere reigning around to the smallest detail and detail. That is why most of the female portraits were painted from photographs of his charming models, frozen in easy and relaxed poses. Their faces and gestures are a real work of art, a fleeting moment, caught in the camera lens, and then cleverly reproduced on canvas.

Sometimes Alphonse, striving for the ideal, made a general composition of fragments of several different photographs, creating truly unique masterpieces worthy of attention.

Continuing the topic, read also about which women and men became the main inspiration for great artists and photographers of all time.