Part 544: Alphonse Mucha Receives Tribute of Chicago Artists, 1906
In 1906, Thomas G. Moses recorded joining the Palette and Chisel Club in Chicago. Of his decision, Moses wrote, “I don’t know why, as I had so little time to give to pictures, but I live in hopes of doing something some day, that is what I have lived on for years, Hope, and how little we realize from our dreams of hope.” The year that he joined, the Palette & Chisel Club, the group sponsored “Bohemian Night” in honor of Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939). Mucha was in town teaching at the Art Institute of Chicago that Fall.
Mucha is one of my favorite artists and a well-known representative of the Art Nouveau style. A Czech painter, sculptor and illustrator, prints of his work have always adorned the walls of either my home or studio. To place Mucha in context with Thomas G. Moses (1856-1943); he was just four years younger than Moses. The two artists’ paths crossed in Chicago during 1906 at the abovementioned Palette and Chisel Club event. At the age of 19, Mucha worked as a scenic art apprentice for Kautsky-Brioschi-Burghardt, a Viennese theatre design company. This employment was short-lived, however, as his position was eliminated by 1881. He and several staff members were all dismissed after Kautsky-Brioschi-Berghardt suffered a financial loss; a major fire destroyed the theater of a significant client – Vienna’s Ring Theatre. Years later, Mucha would paint the front curtain for the newly renovated German Theatre in New York.
To place Mucha’s time in Chicago within the context of his career, he had previously worked in the United States from 1904 to 1905. During 1906, he returned to Prague to marry Marie Chytilová, “Maruška,” on June 10.
The couple honeymooned in the small village of Pec in the highlands of South Bohemia, before traveling to America. Their time spent in Chicago was at the beginning of the couple’s four-year visit in the United States; Mucha accepted a one-term teaching position at the Art Institute. After completing this job in Chicago, the couple lived in New York City and Mucha completed a variety of artistic commissions, including decorating the newly renovated interior of the German Theater in New York. He painted five decorative panels, the stage curtain and painted ornamentation throughout the building. His central panel was known as “Quest for Beauty” and was flanked by to vertical compositions – Tragedy and Comedy. Unfortunately, the theatre was demolished in 1929 and the only surviving works are Mucha’s prelimary drawings for the theatre. In 1909, Mucha was working with the well-known actress Maude Adams and depiction of her in the of Joan of Arc; her portrait was used for the theatre poster.
Mucha became a father in America too, when their daughter Jaroslava was born in New York City during 1909.
While in Chicago during 1906 there were two receptions held in Mucha’s honor. The first was a reception was sponsored by the Art Institute of Chicago to honor their visiting instructor. “The Inter Ocean” reported, “Five hundred students and invited guests of the Art Institute assembled in the upper galleries of that building at 8 o’clock last evening, and for three hours paid social tribute to Alphonse Mucha, admittedly the greatest living exponent of the poster school of art. The artist came to the city from Paris three weeks ago to give a brief course of instruction to the most advanced class in the institute. He leaves next week for New York, where he expects to make his home. Mr. Mucha is widely known both in this country and abroad as an illustrator and poster artist. Several of his works, the most noted of which are La Plume calendar posters, and those representing Sarah Bernhardt in her various roles, have won places at the exhibition in the Salon, at Paris. The walls of the room in which he received his admirers last night were hung with more that a hundred of the best posters and sketches. Owing to an unexpected delay in his arrival in Chicago last month, Mr. Mucha missed the reception which the art students annually hold in honor of all the exhibitors in the institute. His regret in having missed that function resulted in the planning of last night’s reception, which was held solely in his honor” (4 Nov. 1906, page 5).
On November 17, the Palette and Chisel Club sent out invitations for another event honoring Mucha – “The Bohemian Night.” It was held in the Athenaeum Building at 26 Van Buren Street.
On November 21, a social column in the “Inter Ocean” described Mucha’s adventures in Chicago (Inter Ocean, 21 Nov. 1906, page 6): “What does Alphonse Mucha think of Bohemian Chicago. The students over at the Art institute, who are getting the curve theory of composition into their “block” filled systems from Monsieur Mucha’s daily lectures, have had a mad revel or two, under the fatherly eye of Charles Francis Brown or Lorado Taft or some other of the “grads” among the artists; and last Saturday night Monsieur Mucha witnessed a really wild carouse at the Palette and Chisel clubrooms, where members decked themselves out as ladies – the members are men- and simply tore up the earth with burlesque and beer. According to all reports things were just too bohemian for anything – but a Parisian schooled artist. Therefore Monsieur Mucha was able to attend to his Monday afternoon lecture, with only thirty-six hours in which to recover.
It is rumored strongly that Monsieur Mucha is here on his honeymoon trip. And if that is the case we must all pray that the artist and his bride may not leave Chicago for the Mucha studio in New York, which is all ready and waiting on West Twenty-Second street, until after Thanksgiving day. For what would it mean to a real bohemian like Monsieur Mucha to miss the annual orgy of Little Roomers – our real bohemian club – who hold their frantic feasts on the tenth floor of the Fine Arts building, and serve the seductive baked bean canned, which is not a baked bean but a boiled bean; the alluring sardine in his little lake of oil; the stuffed mango pickle, which biteth like an adder, and very sour lemonade, which stingeth like the deuce. At the revels of the Little Roomers, lest Monsieur Mucha throw up his beautiful hands in horror at the thought of Mme. Mucha witnessing such bacchanalian sights, let us hasten to say wives freely take their own husbands, and husbands their own wives. In fact, the idea of a gentleman genius taking his friend’s wife, without written permit, or a lady genius her friend’s husband, without equally definite permission, would be frowned down and out. Wherefore the lemonade. But of the Thanksgiving feast more anon.”
The Muchas returned to Prague in 1910 where Mucha continued to work on a variety of projects. Their second child, Jirí was born in 1915. By 1939, Mucha was one of the first people arrested by the Gestapo when German troops marched into Czecholslavakia that spring. During the lengthy period that he was interrogated, Mucha fell ill with pneumonia. Although he was later released, the illness took its toll on the artist and he died from a lung infection later that year.
To be continued…
