Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923) was said to be the “first modern celebrity,” and her fame has been likened to the likes of today’s Nicole Kidman. She was a French stage and silent film actress and her performances were promoted by posters. No billboards, radio or TV ads back then. But Sarah knew how to “boost” herself.
“Her intuitive understanding of ‘brand management’ plus her extraordinary success as an actor and entrepreneur established the blueprint for the stars of today,” according to an online article by Elizabeth Ruiz posted by the Roundabout Theater Company. “Though she died in 1923 before talking movies were made, many consider her the most famous actress the world has ever known.”
Thus, Sarah knew the minute she laid eyes on a poster created by Czech artist Alphonse Mucha promoting her play Gismonda in 1894 that it would draw large audiences.
“You have made me immortal,” she is said to have told Mucha. He was just a stand-in for Bernhardt’s resident poster maker, who was unavailable.
Mucha’s Gismonda posters were up all over Paris on the morning of Jan. 1, 1895 and they were said to “revolutionize poster design.”
They were characterized, according to the Mucha Museum in Prague, by a long narrow shape and subtle pastel colors.
“The stillness of the near life-size figure introduced a note of dignity and sobriety, which were quite startling in their novelty. The posters immediately became objects of desire to collectors, many of whom used clandestine methods to obtain them,” it noted. At present the Mucha Museum and family have most of Mucha’s posters and artworks in their collection. Only a fraction is said to be with other collectors.
According to Marcus Mucha, great-grandson of the artist, who toured us around the Mucha House in Prague, some people actually used razors to strip the posters off the walls and keep them.
In her gratitude to the Czech artist, Sarah gifted him with the portable piano of Mozart that she used as a makeup table, the only known portable piano of its kind, which Marcus showed us during a tour of the Mucha house, near Prague’s royal castle. Unfortunately, the makeup has been misplaced by the restorers!
Mucha’s art, very Art Nouveau, struck me as familiar, but one which I couldn’t quite connect to a particular artist till I visited Prague to relive the Belle Epoch era upon the invitation of the Czech Foreign Ministry, the Czech embassy in Manila and Czech Tourism. Its elegance and realism — the posters and many paintings are virtual portraits — are indeed immortal.
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It was a thrill to visit the Mucha House in Prague, where his grandson John, Marcus’ father, still lives whenever he is in the city. Marcus is the keeper of his great-grandfather’s legacy.
The Mucha House is also said to be the birthplace of St. John Nepomuceno, according to Marcus.
“My great-grandfather never actually lived in this house,” Marcus, who once worked in Hollywood, told our group, which included Maros Martin Guoth, head of the Economic and Trade Section of the Czech Embassy in Manila, and Michal Prochazka, director of Czech Tourism; writers Arnel Patawaran and Berg Go; and influencer Jeremy Favia. “He lived about two miles that way. He had his studio there. But then when the communist coup happened in Czechoslovakia, my family was kicked out of that house. All of the property that was in the house was put on the street and my grandparents had to try to find somewhere else to live. It just so happened that this house as well was becoming free at the time.
“My grandparents put all of the art and all of the property into a truck and they drove up the hill. We moved in and we’ve been here ever since. And what my grandparents tried to do was recreate something like the atmosphere of the Mucha studio in Paris as it was at the end of the 19th century,” Marcus shared.
The house, with creaking wooden floors and said to be “haunted,” has high ceilings, glittering chandeliers, rich velvet upholstery, several of Mucha’s original posters and paintings and a bed where a murder is said to have taken place. Though the house is largely private the Mucha Museum downtown is open to the public, and Marcus disclosed that the museum is also arranging for students from farms in the Czech Republic to visit it. Transportation for the students will be provided.
In addition, there are currently Mucha exhibitions in Paris and Barcelona. “In the last two years we’ve had exhibitions in Japan and in Taipei, and in Beijing, and in Shanghai,” Marcus added.
Marcus believes, “If people had some of his art in their house, it would make their lives a little bit better. And by making lots of people’s lives a little bit better, we could make things in humanity better. (Alphonse Mucha) was very proud of his Czech roots, but he thought that every country was a kind of individual flower and each country could look to its traditions to help that flower bloom. Now, once we’ve got all of these flowers, we can weave them together and create bridges and for him, that’s what his vision for humanity was. We can respect our differences, we can respect our different cultures and find our way to live together in peace and harmony. Draw bridges together between those cultures and that’s what he saw the role of art as being.”
(You may e-mail me at joanneraeramirez@yahoo.com. Follow me on Instagram @joanneraeramirez.)