?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 25,000 - $ 35,000
ALPHONSE MUCHA (1860-1939) JOB. 1896. 22 1/2x17 1/2 inches, 57x44 1/2 cm. F. Champenois, Paris. Condition A / A-: crease through left margin. Matted and framed. Job cigarette rolling papers, offered in small packets, were the brainchild of Jean Bardou, a baker in Perpignan. On the cover of these booklets he put his initials separated by a diamond. The public interpreted this as "Job," and the name stuck. Bardou was both a patron of the arts and a man with exceptional vision in regard to advertising. He commissioned Jules Chéret, Pal, Leonetto Cappiello, Firmin Bouisset and Toulouse-Lautrec to design posters for his company. Mucha designed two posters for Job. The first is this charming, small-format piece featuring the bust of a woman with extravagant hair. She appears to be the same woman he depicted on his poster for the Salon Des Cent's 1896 exhibition (see previous lot). But, whereas the other poster was "an unfinished design" in Mucha's mind, this image for Job is complete. Mucha worked with the design until it gleamed like the metallic gold ink he used. The "exquisite arabesque of luxuriant hair . . . became the artist's trademark over the next few years" (Rennert/Weill p. 82). No longer based on reality, the hair on Mucha's maiden became an entirely decorative element, as does the smoke rising from her cigarette. The borders and the poster's title are designed to look like a mosaic, and against the background, Mucha ingeniously utilizes a stylized version of the company's logo as another decorative element. Rennert/Weill 15, DFP-II 635, Maitres pl. 202, Lendl 49, Spirit of Art Nouveau 20, Wember 609, Weill 58, Triumph des Jugendstils p. 57.
