Page:Historical paintings of the Slavic nations by Alfons Mucha (1921).pdf/13

 extent of their influence, this group added a new note to contemporary artistic endeavour. They made art an affair of the theatre, the home, and the shop, rather than the exclusive possession of palace and museum. In a sense they were our first really creative modernists.

The aesthetic aspect of the movement, which was above all characterized by a rhythmic, inventive sense of stylization, and a singular freedom and suavity of vision, seemed best exemplified in the personality and production of Alfons Mucha. First through his posters, and later through his religious and historical compositions, he became an exponent of that new decorative idealism which at this period was so prominent alike in art and in letters. The supple flow of his line, his profuse use of ornament, and his passionate lyric aspiration all reflected the current taste of the day. A typical oriental Slav, Mucha’s rightful province was not Paris, nor even Prague, but the gardens of Semiramis and the palace of Scheherezade. Like Rostand, Pierre Louys, Robert de Flers, and the popular poets and playwrights of the early and middle nineties, he also harked back to Italy, to Greece, and to Byzantium in quest of themes heroic or amourous. For he, too, was a lover of Princesses lointaines.

And yet this art at once floral, astral, and feminine, which revealed with tender nonchalance the supple beauty of the body, and the delicately veiled secrets of the soul, was not destined to be Alfons Mucha’s final expression. These sumptuous, hieratic creatures, crowned with the jewels of Théodora, and exhaling the passionate perfume of Ilsée, Princesse of Tripoli, were succeeded by work of a more serious and substantial character. If anything further were necessary to confirm the success of the young Czech with the public