Brožík learnt lithography as an apprentice in the years 1864−1866 and then worked for several years in a porcelain factory. He became one of the foremost portraitists and painters of historical subjects of his time. His name is associated with the construction of the National Theatre in which he contributed to the decoration of the Royal Box with his work The Three Ages of the Czech Lands. In the years 1868−1870 he studied at the academies in Prague under professors Emanuel Roma and Antonín Lhota and then in 1873−1874 in Dresden and Munich, where he was greatly influenced by the work of Karl Theodor von Piloty. He completed his studies in Paris in 1876 at the studio of Léon Bonnat. During a study trip to Holland in 1879, he mastered the old masters’ techniques typical of Dutch painting from the 17th to the 19th centuries. From 1876 he lived in Paris and in 1886 was the only Czech artist to be elected to membership of the Académie française and the following year he was raised to the nobility by Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria. In 1893 he became professor of historical painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague.