Drawing

1904–1909

Meeting his patron Charles Crane

At a Pan-Slavic banquet in New York City he met Charles Richard Crane, a wealthy businessman and philanthropist and a passionate Slavophile who shared his enthusiasm for a series of monumental paintings on Slavic history and became Mucha’s most important patron.

1910

Return to his homeland: the move to Prague

Offered a commission in 1909 to paint murals in the interior of the new Prague city hall, he decided to return to his old country, then still part of the Austrian Empire, and in 1910 moved to Prague, writing to his wife that he would be able to do something really good, not just for the art critic but for Slav souls.

February 1910

Crane agrees to fund “The Slav Epic”

Mucha completed his plans for “The Slav Epic” in 1908 and 1909, and in February 1910 Charles Crane agreed to fund the project.

1910–1911

The Lord Mayor’s Hall in Prague’s Municipal House

The commission quickly became controversial, because local Prague artists resented the work being given to an outsider; by a compromise Mucha decorated only the Lord Mayor’s Hall, with murals for the domed ceiling and walls showing athletic figures in heroic poses, celebrating the contribution of Slavs to European history and Slavic unity, while other artists decorated the remaining rooms. The hall was finished in 1911.

after 1911

A studio in Zbiroh Castle

For the enormous canvases, six by eight metres, he rented an apartment and a studio in Zbiroh Castle in western Bohemia, where he lived and worked until 1928.

1912–1926

The twenty canvases of “The Slav Epic”

He created the twenty canvases — ten devoted to the history of the Czechs and ten to other Slavic peoples and the Balkans, including the Orthodox monasteries of Mount Athos — in egg tempera, which, according to his research, dried more quickly, was more luminous and would last longer. He worked throughout the First World War despite wartime restrictions that made canvas hard to obtain.