#389 Czech Republic...Thanks Josef !

This FDC is from 1974 Art series showing Self Portrait of Ludvik Kuba.

Ludvík Kuba (1863-1956) was a Czech landscape painter, musician, writer, professor in the Academy of Fine Arts. He was a representative of the Late-Impressionism and he collected folk traditions.

Ludvík Kuba studied to play the organ and privately learnt drawing at Bohuslav Schnirch and Karel Liebscher. He was accepted to the Academy of Fine Arts and educated in the studio of Max Pirner (1891-93). Then he studied at Académie Julian in Paris (1893-95) and the school of Anton Ažbe in Munich (1895-1904). He then devoted his life to painting, collecting folk songs (e.g. Slovanstvo ve svých písních - "Slavonic peoples in their songs" recorded 4000 songs) and writing about folk traditions. His artistic style was highly marked with Impressionism and he mainly painted landscapes (his favourite was South Bohemia), portraits (e.g. Josef Svatopluk Machar) and still-lifes (e.g. Red Begonias). He was awarded a lot of Czech and international prizes.

The 19k stamp was issued in 2005 commemorating Bicent.of Battle of Austerlitz.

The Battle of Austerlitz, also known as the Battle of the Three Emperors, was Napoleon's greatest victory, effectively destroying the Third Coalition against the French Empire. On 2 December 1805, a French army, commanded by Emperor Napoleon I, decisively defeated a Russo-Austrian army, commanded by Tsar Alexander I, after nearly nine hours of difficult fighting. The battle took place near Austerlitz (Slavkov u Brna) about 10 km (6 miles) south-east of Brno in Moravia (present day Czech Republic). The battle is often regarded as a tactical masterpiece.

The French victory at Austerlitz effectively brought the Third Coalition to an end. On 26 December 1805, Austria and France signed the Treaty of Pressburg, which took Austria out of the war, reinforced the earlier treaties of Campo Formio and Lunéville, made Austria cede land to Napoleon's German allies, and imposed an indemnity of 40 million francs on the defeated Habsburgs. Russian troops were allowed to head back to home soil. Victory at Austerlitz also permitted the creation of the Confederation of the Rhine, a collection of German states intended as a buffer zone between France and central Europe. In 1806, the Holy Roman Empire ceased to exist when Holy Roman Emperor Francis II kept Francis I of Austria as his only official title. These achievements, however, did not establish a lasting peace on the continent. Prussian worries about growing French influence in Central Europe sparked the War of the Fourth Coalition in 1806.