Viktor Oliva was a master of drawing, illustration, and painting born in Nové Strašecí, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary24 April 1861. His main style was Art Nouveau. At the age of 17 he attended the Academy of Fine Arts, Prague and studied under František Sequens, who respected his work greatly. He continued his studies at the Munich Academy. In 1888 he was drawn to the Montmartre area of Paris to be part of the ever rapidly expanding artistic community there. He lived there for some years and became good friends with other "Bohemian Parisiens" such as Luděk Marold, Mikoláš Aleš, Jakub Arbes, and Karel Vítězslav Mašek. This group of actual Bohemians were right in the heart of the "Bohemian Revolution". His art greatly improved in such a richly artistic environment. Paris is where he discovered the joy of absinthe. He also greatly loved the exhilaration of ballooning. This group all held very true to the ideals that the Artistic Bohemians believed in. They all lived and worked there for several years before returning to their home in true Bohemia. In 1897 he was given the job of Images Editor at the popular Czech language magazineZlatá Praha. He held this job for 19 years. Shortly after he started work there, he married a girl named Anna Adamcová who was enamored with his talent. Not long after that, she gave birth to his son Viktor Oliva Jr.. The marriage didn't last long, as Anna ran away with a singer named Mařák. Oliva was still able to spend some time with his son, which brought him much joy. Over the next quarter century, Oliva was very prolific in his work. He spent a lot of time with his worldly best friendJosef Kořenský. Oliva was commissioned to create many dramatic works including the ceilings of several buildings in Bohemia. He also had several works hanging in his favorite cafe, Café Slavia. He was profiled in Český Svět magazine in 1926, two years before his death. Here is a translation of the text: "Anniversary of the life of such a kind and likable artist sets our memories well back – to the end of the 1880s – when the very young artist Oliva began to help with artistic decoration of Czech books with such an elegance and charm, that he soon became one of the most famous Czech illustrators up there with Luděk Marold, for example. Oliva did illustrations for several books of Svatopluk Čech, Jan Neruda, Karel Václav Rais, Václav Beneš Třebízský, Kronbauer – those were published for almost two decades with his illustrations. As a landscape and figure artist, huge canvases of Oliva hang in Café Slavia, the walls of buildings on Slavia Island, and Mestanska Beseda in Pilsen. He died on 5 April 1928 in Prague and was buried in Olšany Cemetery in an area for famous artists.
According to an annotation from what is most likely the Troja Chateau gallery in Prague: According to the catalog of Czech artauction house Meissner-Neumann:
