Alphonse Mucha – Girl With a Plate With a Folk Motif

Alphonse Mucha, Girl With a Plate With a Folk Motif, 1920

The first thing that catches my attention about this portrait is the girl’s eyes; concentrated, focused, not blinking and not shying away, but staring deep into my soul. With a gaze like that, one might assume this was a portrait of a femme fatale or some enchantress from Arthurian legends, but actually the portrait shows the Czech Art Nouveau artist Alphonse Mucha’s pretty daughter Jaroslava who was eleven years old at the time this portrait was painted. A great poser she seems to have been; like mother, like daughter, I might say because Mucha’s wife Maria Chytilová was his muse and often posed for his paintings. Seriously, who the hell looks this badass while holding a paintbrush in one hand and a pretty plate in another!? Jaroslava studied ballet, but decided to give that up and follow her father’s footsteps. She not only posed for him, but also helped him out in the studio, by mixing colours for his Slav Epic and also painting the starry sky in the painting “Slavs in their Original Homeland: Between the Turanian Whip and the sword of the Goths”. After the World War II, Jaroslava even worked on restoring the paintings from the Slav Epic which had been damaged during the war due to bad storing conditions. It seems that the determined look in her eyes in the portrait isn’t just an aesthetic thing, but a representation of her character. I love everything about this portrait; her eyes the most, but also her pose, the way she is showing off that pretty plate with floral folk motifs, and the way her pinky finger is resting coquettishly on her upper lip. The yellow flower in her long, flowing hair makes her seem like a free-spirited hippie girl and the white dress she is wearing, with a puff sleeve tightened with a red ribbon, appear peasant like which perhaps goes well with the folk motif on the porcelain plate. The motif on the plate with a stylised tulips and sunflowers is both simple and charming. The blue background is echoed by traces of blue and lilac in her hair. The brush in her hand seems to say; you may think I am a muse, but I have a few artistic tricks up my sleeves as well.