local ruins to a dealer called Thiery who displayed it in his shop window and quickly sold it on.
Fruit
1897
Colour lithograph, 66 × 44 cm.
Mucha Museum, Prague.
So I got busy drawing again, not ruins this time, but the people around me. I painted the head of a pretty woman and brought it to Thiery. He put it into the window and I began to look forward to the cash. When there was no news from Thiery for two and even three days, I went to ask him myself. The good man wasn’t pleased to see me. Mikulov society was filled with indignation, and my picture had to be taken out of the window.
Vin des Incas
1897–1899
Colour lithograph, 13.6 × 36 cm.
Mucha Trust.
The young lady I had painted was the wife of the local doctor, and Thiery had put a notice next to the portrait saying, ‘For five florins at the Lion Hotel’. The scandal was duly explained and in the end worked out to my advantage. The whole town knew that a painter had come to live at the Lion. In the course of time, I painted the whole neighbourhood – all the uncles and aunts of Mikulov.
Monaco – Monte-Carlo
1897
Colour lithograph, 110 × 76 cm.
Mucha Museum, Prague.
It was while he was living in Mikulov that Mucha encountered the first of the two patrons who were to transform his career. One was a wealthy local landowner called Count Khuen, who invited Mucha to decorate the dining room in the newly-built castle of Emmahof with frescoes. This was Mucha’s first encounter with murals and initiated a life-long ambition of paint large-scale decorative work.
Salon des Cent: Exposition de l’Œuvre de Mucha
1897
Colour lithograph, 67 × 47 cm.
Mucha Museum, Prague.
Even the posters of the 1890s, on which Mucha’s fame now largely rests, can be seen as reflecting this desire to decorate walls. Such a desire was common to many artists of the fin-de-siècle. The large scale decorative paintings of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, the most widely-admired and influential artist of the period, were commonly referred to as “fresques” though they were in fact oil paintings on canvas that simulated the effect of frescoes.
Bières de la Meuse
1897
Colour lithograph, 155 × 104.5 cm.
Park South Gallery at Carnegie Hall, New York.
The manifesto of the Symbolist “Salon de la Rose-Croix” set up in 1892 by “Sar” Joséphin Péladan, stated “The Order prefers work which has a mural-like character as being of superior essence”. The paintings of Edvard Munch’s “Frieze of Life” and the flat, stylised canvases of Gauguin could be regarded as “fresques manquées”.
Brunette
1897
Colour lithograph, 34.5 × 28 cm.
Mucha Trust.
Albert Aurier, the very first critic who attempted to introduce Gauguin’s work to the French public wrote “You have among you a decorator of genius. Walls! Walls! Give him walls!”. We can only judge Mucha’s murals for Count Khuen from dim black and white photographs as the originals were destroyed in the final days of the Second World War but they were no doubt fairly conventional and academic as all his work would be for the next few years.
Blond
1897
Colour lithograph, 56 × 34.8 cm.
Mucha Trust.
When the first set of murals was finished at Emmahof, Count Khuen passed Mucha on to his brother Count Egon, who lived in the ancestral castle of Gandegg in the Tyrol, who in turn sent Mucha off for a period of study in Munich.
La Plume
1897
Colour lithograph, 25 × 18 cm.
Mucha Trust.
After Bavaria was raised to the dignity of a kingdom early in the nineteenth century, King Ludwig determined that his capital should become the cultural capital of central and German-speaking Europe. The public buildings he commissioned in Neoclassical and Neo-Renaissance style made his desire that Munich be seen as the Athens or the Florence of the North clear to the world.
Cover for Chansons d’aïeules
1897
Colour lithograph, 33 × 25 cm.
Collection of Victor Arwas, London.
By the end of the century, Munich was regarded by many as a serious alternative to Paris. Amongst the aspiring artists who were attracted to Munich were Lovis Corinth, Wassily Kandinsky, Alexei von Jawlensky, Paul Klee and Giorgio de Chirico. Even the young Picasso briefly considered going to Munich in preference to Paris.
Decorative Plate with Symbol of Paris
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