of the streets and the fashionable glitter of the drawing-rooms.
In order to earn a livelihood, he turned his impressions of Parisian life to account, doing illustration-work, supplying the great Parisian firms which soon learnt to exploit his industry and fertile imagination. Thus he did illustrations for Daudet, Bourget, Theuriet, the Margueritte brothers, the Rosny brothers, Pierre Louys, Yriarte, Erckmann-Chatrian and such periodicals as Le Monde Illustré and L’Illustration. But the longer he stayed in Paris, the more he became a prey to home-sickness. Accordingly he returned to Prague, where he was at first engaged in painting the panorama of the Hussite battle of Lipany, in which he gave full scope to his deftness in technique. He was projecting several other works when death removed him in 1898, at the early age of thirty-three.
Marold’s patrons had hoped that, by sending him to Galland’s studio, they would mould a teacher who would represent official French art at the Prague Academy. The artist’s irrepressible temperament, however, brought the plan to nought. Nevertheless, the mission was fulfilled, though not of set purpose, by the Moravian Alfons Mucha. After a first attempt that failed, he managed to settle in Paris, where he attended the studios of Lefèbvre, Boulanger and Laurens. Like Marold, he had to do illustration-work for the sake of a livelihood. A poster for the first performance of Gismonde at the Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt brought him fame. Orders for posters came thick and fast, and in 1897, at the Salon de La Plume, he got up an exhibition that made no little stir. At the great Paris Exhibition of 1900 he carried out the decoration of the Bosnian Pavilion, was awarded a medal and admitted to the Legion of Honour. Among his illustrations, we may single out for mention those done for Seignobos’ “Scenes and Episodes from German History,” in which
