?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,000
ALPHONSE MUCHA (1860-1939) CASSAN FILS. 1896. 69x26 1/2 inches, 175 1/4x67 1/4 cm. Cassan Fils, Toulouse. Condition B: restored losses, repaired tears, creases and overpainting in image and along vertical and horizontal folds and seam; water stain in bottom margin. Two-sheets. Framed. Cassan was the largest and most important lithographer in Southwest France. His firm, which had an office in Paris, handled major accounts and also represented some of the best artists of the day, including Jane Atché and Lucien Baylac. Mucha's image is an elaborate and exquisite self advertisement for the printer, featuring a seamless blend of allegorical printing imagery with fantasy. "The muscular printer is an allegorical figure, representing the [printing] industry. An unusual border of eyes in the mosaic background probably is meant to indicate the multitude of readers for whom the printing trade works. It is also one of the mystic symbols used by Mucha in several other works" (Rennert / Weill p. 70). The young lady is herself representative of the public that patronizes printers. She is marked by her beauty, a state of semi-undress and stylized cascading hair. In a brilliant self-referential detail, she is pulling prints straight off the press that feature other young women with equally flowing locks - as if Mucha were indicating how his archetypical treatment of female tresses was about to take over the industry. This is the large format. Rennert / Weill 11, DFP-II 640, Lendl 20, Mucha / Bridges A24, Triumph des Jugendstils p. 55, Reims 897.
