Artist

Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939) was a Czech artist, famous even today for his Art Nouveau decorative style. He is best known for his numerous paintings, posters, and advertisements, in which he depicts beautiful women in long flowing robes with flowers in their hair and in the background. His illustrations gained the support of American millionaire and philanthropist Charles R. Crane, who was also a friend of Czechoslovakia’s first President T. G. Masaryk. One of the works that Crane funded was Mucha’s Slavonic Epic, a masterpiece of paintings portraying the history of the Slavic people. Perchance in return, Mucha selected Crane’s American wife, Josephine, as his model for the female image illustrated on the one hundred crown banknote, put into circulation in 1920 in the newly founded Czechoslovakia.