we can trace the influence of the French historical painters, notably of Laurens. The lithographs for the “Princesse Ilsée,” by De Flers, and the “Paternoster” series are executed in the poster style which Grasset made familiar in the streets. The figures, a little stiffened by a hieratic symbolism, almost Byzantine in character, are essentially decorative: they are drawn with a pure, precise line, calligraphic even, and the colour, remarkable for its softness, is added only as an afterthought. Mucha’s work contains many elements borrowed from the old illuminated manuscripts, but he also contrived to turn to decorative uses many forms taken from living Nature, especially from plant life. On his return to Prague he devoted himself entirely to the great enterprise of his “Slav Epic Cycle,” an enormous series of huge historical canvases in which he harked back to the point where he started.
The time has come for citing a name which will serve to mark the transition to the next generation and which, after enjoying in France a certain authority before the war, earned distinction in the glorious struggle of France against Germany. In fighting under the tricolour, František Kupka also fought for the cause of Czechoslovak freedom. After Marold and Mucha, he is the third Czech artist to become acclimatized in Paris. Although an ardent realist, he contemplates reality with a mordant irony, and even when he is confronted with the great mysteries of life and the universe, we find him seized with a sombre ecstacy. A vein of philosophic reflexion often runs through his canvases, and their composition and technique betray an independent, even a rebellious spirit. He too, became an illustrator in order to earn a living. The comic paper, L’Asstette au beurre, published his scathing attacks upon the plutocracy, clericalism, Prussian militarism, social hypocrisy, in which he always displayed a fertile invention and a consummate knowledge of form. His drawings
