Vojtěch Hynais

Vojtěch Adalbert Hynais (also Albert; 14 January 1854, Vienna – 22 August 1925, Prague) was a Czech painter, designer and graphics artist. He designed the curtain of the Prague National Theatre, decorated a number of buildings in Prague and Vienna, and was a founding member of the Vienna Secession. He was made an Officer of the Légion d'honneur in 1924.

Hynais's father was a Czech tailor who had moved to Vienna, and did not want his children to receive a German education, so Hynais was taught at home. He began studying at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna in 1870, under Karl Wurzinger and August Eisenmenger, then at Anselm Feuerbach's school in spring 1873; he was considered to be one of his most promising students. He visited Italy and saw Rome in 1874 with Jan Šubic and again 1877 with Feuerbach.

Hynais lived in Paris from 1878 to 1893, where he learnt from Paul-Jacques-Aimé Baudry and Jean-Léon Gérome, and knew Alfons Mucha. In 1885, he received an honorable mention from the 1885 Universal Exhibition of Fine Arts, and a first-class medal at the 1889 World's Fair. He married his wife, Augusta Voirinová, in Paris, with whom he had two children.

During the 1870s, art was being produced to decorate the under-construction Prague National Theatre. Hynais was not considered to be suitably representative of the national spirit by Czech art critics because he lived in, and had absorbed too much influence from, Vienna. Still, he created nationalist images for the Royal Lounge, including allegorical, historico-mythic scenes and landscapes of Bohemia.

...
Wikipedia