Favorite Women of Art #9--Panel from the Times of Day--Alphonse Mucha (1897) You cannot go too far wrong with Mucha, since all he painted were attractive young women in elegant and flattering poses. I chose the one above for my series because Mrs Bourgeois Surrender bought a print of it when we lived in the Czech Republic (Mucha was Czech and is still much celebrated in that country) and it hung in our bathroom and later my office for many years. Then one day it was gone, shunted off to the attic, for Mrs S had decided that it was the sort of picture a young person would have on her wall, not a 30-year old mother, in which judgement, as she is in all matters of taste, she was exactly right.

But to get back to the subject of the younger and more immature art audience, women of a certain type--a certain type that I like--love Mucha in the same way that they love Klimt and that they love Jules and Jim. He sees them just as, apparently, they want to see themselves, and do see themselves when they are doing something exhilirating or hanging out and holding their own with exhilirating people (i.e., cool men). They like that. His taste admittedly was excellent, though as the remaining pictures I have chosen will demonstrate, this was an age generally that understood what constituted feminine beauty, as well as what adorned most becomingly and upliftingly.

Since Mucha painted so many lovely women, there is no reason not to put another one of his pictures on here. This one is entitled Fruit. I like her lots.