Alphonse Mucha

Executed in 1931, the present work is an allegory of saving. It is possible that it may have been commissioned by Slavia Bank, as a symbolic celebration of the Slavic people. The insurance company’s foundations were laid as early as 1868 under the rule of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. However, its emergence of a purely Czech insuring bank following the creation of Czechoslovakia in 1918 was a politically symbolic event at the time. The name Slavia, personifying the ideal of Slavic reciprocity and solidarity, gave the bank access to all countries in the former Austro-Hungarian empire. Mucha was by nature a staunch patriot, and this work was made shortly after completing what he considered to be his life’s masterwork, The Slav Epic: a cycle of 20 monumental canvases painted between 1910 and 1928. The cycle depicts the mythology and history of Czechs and other Slavic peoples. In 1928, after finishing his monumental work, Mucha bestowed the cycle upon the city of Prague on the condition that the city build a special pavilion for it. This never happened, and the works remain housed in the chateau of the small Moravian town of Krumlov.

Born in Ivancice, Moravia, near the city of Brno in modern-day Czech Republic, Alphonse Mucha began his artistic training taking drawing lessons at the Academy of Visual Arts in Prague and continued his studies in Munich. In 1890, the young artist moved to Paris and enrolled in the Academie Julien where he was the student of academic painters Jean Paul Laurens, Gustave Boulanger and Jules Lefebvre, whose influence can be seen in the rigorous modelling of the figures in the present work.

A preliminary drawing for this composition is in the collection of Mucha's estate (no. 2231).