Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939) was born in Moravia, now a region in the Czech Republic. His talent for drawing and music was recognized when he was young. His early training was in music and violin in the Catholic church. Later he wrote to friends, “For me, the notions of painting, going to church, and music are so closely knit that often I cannot decide whether I like church for its music, or music for its place in the mystery which it accompanies.”
He designed posters supporting Czech nationalism. He moved to Vienna in 1880, and he worked for a company that made theater sets. He became a friend of Hans Markarat, an important academic painter who was a major influence on Mucha’s art. In 1881 he met Count Eduard Belasi, who became a major patron. He took Mucha to Florence and Milan and paid his tuition and expenses at the Munich Academy of Fine Art. Mucha began to receive commissions. He moved to Paris in 1888 to study at the Academie Julian and in 1889 the Academie Colarossi. He became friends with Paul Gauguin and August Strindberg. He began to work for Sarah Bernhardt 1894.
Mucha previously had made a series of illustrations of Sara Bernhardt in the play Cleopatra for the magazine Le Costumes au Theatre (1890). Victorien Sardou’s Gismonda, with Bernhardt playing the lead role was so popular it was extended for months. Mucha was commissioned to create a new poster for the play in a hurry. Gismonda was a Byzantine noblewoman. In the poster, she is dressed in a gold and white floral stole with a headdress of purple orchids. She holds a palm branch that was used in an Easter procession at the end of the play. Byzantine mosaic tiles can be seen behind her head.
The style of the poster art was new. Mucha was associated with it, and his work defined Art Nouveau. The dynamic lines of leaves, vines, flowers, and sensuous women with free-flowing hair were his specialty. He employed straight lines to define the floor and a small ledge by Gismonda’s shoulder. All else flows and glows.
The poster went on display in Paris streets on January 1, 1895, and it caused a sensation. Bernhardt ordered 4000 additional copies in 1895 and 1896. She signed Mucha to a six-year contract. He already had been commissioned by the magazine Le Gaulois to make a series of images from Gismonda for a special Christmas supplement (1894). Mucha was everywhere.
Bernhardt played the role of the princess Melisinde in the play La Princesse Lointaine (The Faraway Princess) (1896) by Edmond Rostand. This half-length version of the poster was commissioned by Bernhardt’s friends to serve as an invitation to a banquet held in her honor at the Grand Hotel in Paris on December 12, 1896. The character Melissinde was a pure maiden who held herself distant from others as Mucha portrays her. He created the tiara of white lilies she wears in her hair.
Mucha’s poster/invitation was so popular that it was reproduced in the magazine La Plume, and it was made into a postcard sold at La Belle Jardiniere department store.
The Mucha and Bernhardt collaboration was a huge success. Mucha designed jewelry for her, as well as posters, programs, sets, and costumes. Bernhardt was a good business woman who took several posters from each play to sell to collectors. As for Mucha, from 1880-1910 he had a contract with Imprimierie Champernois, a major Paris printer. He created over one hundred designs for such items as JOB cigarette papers, Moet-Chandon champagne, Nestle baby food, Trappestine brandy, and Waverly and Perfect bicycles. He designed series on flowers, the seasons, the arts, and travel. They were sold as expensive prints on satin or vellum, and less expensive versions on cardstock as calendars and postcards.
Bernhardt played the male lead, Lorenzo de’ Medici, in Alfred de Musett’s play Lorenzaccio (1896), set in Renaissance Florence. Lorenzo realizes his cousin, the tyrant Duke Alessandro, was ruining Florence. In the poster Mucha depicts the evil force as a spiny green dragon on the arch over Lorenzo’s head. Posed in a s-shaped curve, Bernhardt contemplates what must be done. At Lorenzo’s feet is a green dagger with a curved blade. Lorenzo will use the dagger to assassinate his cousin. The colors brown and green dominate the design, accented with blood red on the Medici shield, Lorenzo’s belt, and garter.
Mucha’s poster for Medee (1898), the Greek tragedy by Euripides (431 BCE), depicts the main character at the climax of the story. Medee, princess of Colchian and daughter of the sun god Helios, helps Jason and the Argonauts with her magic to bring back the Golden Fleece. Medee and Jason marry and have two sons. When Jason decides to leave her to marry a Corinthian princess, Medee’s anger has no bounds. Mucha portrayed Bernhardt’s eyes full of rage. As a woman betrayed, Medee decides on a horrible revenge. Pretending to forgive her husband, she gives him a gift for his bride, a beautiful gown and diadem. The gown and headdress are poisoned and immediately cause the princess great pain and death. Her father rushes in to save her and also is consumed. The bride lies dead at Medee’s feet. Not yet satisfied, Medee holds a bloody dagger which she has used to kill their two sons. Mucha depicts Medee with a headdress of dark flowers with spikes coming from it, a reference to the poisoned tiara. She wears a serpent bracelet coiled around her arm.
Mucha and the jeweler George Fouquet collaborated on the design for Bernhardt’s serpent bracelet. The design included opals, rubies, diamonds, a gold snake, and cloisonne enamel. The bracelet was similar to the costume bracelet she wore as Medee. Jiri Mucha (1915-1991) son of Alfonse, said the bracelet was made to conceal Sarah Bernhardt’s arthritic wrist. Fouquet and Mucha formed a successful collaboration that produced Art Nouveau jewelry and the opening of a salon in 1901.
Mucha’s work was exhibited in Paris, Vienna, Prague, Munich, Brussels, London, and New York. He also created decorative panels for walls and windows, designed and made furniture, worked with enamels and porcelain, made jewelry, and continued to make posters. In 1900 he began teaching at the Academy Colarossi (1870-1930) in Paris, the new progressive alternative to the Academy Julian. His role in designing the 1900 Paris Universal Exposition earned him the title of Knight of the Order of Franz Joseph from Austria and the Legion of Honor from France.
Bernhardt first toured America in 1880, and she made nine more tours until 1918. One of Bernhardt’s most famous roles was in La Dame aux Camelias. Mucha designed the poster (1896). Mucha and Bernhardt chose to redesign that poster for Farewell America Tour (1905-06). The poster is the same except for the text and the red roses, replacing the white camellias. Red roses traditionally are associated with love, and they expressed Bernhardt’s feelings for the American people. On her last tour, she was in a wheelchair. Her right leg had to be amputated in 1915. She continued to play roles in which she could be seated or carried until her death at age 78 in 1923. She was proclaimed “The Divine Sarah” in 1879.
Mucha’s five visits to America from 1904 until 1909 included teaching special classes at the New York School of Applied Design for Women, the Philadelphia School of Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1904 he wrote, “You must have been very surprised by my decision to come to America, perhaps even amazed. But in fact, I had been preparing to come here for some time. It had become clear to me that I would never have time to do the things I wanted to do if I did not get away from the treadmill of Paris. I would be constantly bound to publishers and their whims…In America, I don’t expect to find wealth, comfort, or fame for myself, only the opportunity to do some more useful work.”
Mucha created the Slav Epic (1912-26), a series of twenty monumental paintings of the history of his native land, the Czechs, and the other Slavic people from the dark ages through the future. He commented, “The purpose of my work was never to destroy but always to create, to construct bridges, because we must live in the hope that humankind will draw together, and the better we understand each other the easier this will become.”
NOTE: Currently at the Nelson-Adkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, through August 30, 2026, are 100 paintings in the exhibition Timeless Mucha: The Magic of Line.
