?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 6,000 - $ 9,000
ALPHONSE MUCHA (1860-1939) CHOCOLAT IDEAL. 1897. 33 1/2x22 inches. F. Champenois, Paris. Condition A: tear through right margin; wrinkles in image. Matted and Framed. Above all others, Mucha's is the name, and the art, most commonly associated with Art Nouveau. Even during his lifetime, at the peak of his success in the 1890s, Art Nouveau was referred to as Le Style Mucha<>. Born in a small town in Moravia, Mucha studied art and design in Munich and Vienna before he ended up in Paris in 1887. Once there he found minor employment as an illustrator for books and magazines. It was an oft recounted fluke occurrence that catapulted Mucha to fame. In 1894, he was the only artist available to create a last minute poster design for the famous actress, Sarah Bernhardt. His design was literally revolutionary. By no means the founder of the Art Nouveau movement, Mucha was a remarkably inventive, virtuoso designer, with an acute eye and sense of design, coupled with a burning desire for fame and fortune. No one drew such fluid women or flowers as he did, and the public, from the rich collectors to the petit bourgeoisie, scampered to buy anything by Mucha that they could lay their hands on. And they could lay their hands on a lot, thanks to Mucha's clever partnership with the printer Champenois, and the magazine Le Plume<>; together they would satisfy the public's never-ending appetite for the artist's work, and would publish, promote and sell Mucha's images at an extraordinary rate. Although this is an exquisitely drawn and rendered image of a charming domestic scene, it is done in a style that is more straightforward and commercial than most of Mucha's posters, with only the steam from the hot chocolate showing any of his usual flourishing curls. That said, his mastery of design still stands out. The slightly awkward lettering and package displays on the bottom, were most certainly the result of the client insisting on their name and package appearing more prominently. The Compagnie Francaise des Chocolats et Thes<> is the name that was used by the German firm Chocolat Schaal<> for the French market and in fact, the German version of this posters bears that original German brand name. This company had extraordinarily good artistic sense as they also commissioned Theofile-Alexandre Steinlen and Abel Faivre to design other posters. Rennert / Weill 32, Mucha, A28.
