?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 12,000 - $ 18,000
ALPHONSE MUCHA (1860-1939) JOB. 1896. 24x17 7/8 inches. F. Champenois, Paris. Condition A-: minor repaired tears in margins. Jean Bardou, a baker in Perpignan, had the brilliant idea to offer smokers rolling papers in small packets. 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. Consequently he commissioned Jules Cheret, Pal, Leonetto Cappiello, Firmin Bouisset and even Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec to design posters for his company. Mucha ultimately designed two posters for Bardou. The first, in 1896, is a charming, small-format piece featuring the bust of a woman with typically extravagant hair. She appears to be the same woman he depicted on his poster for the Salons Des Cent's XXme exhibition. 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 adopted 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, Spirit of Art Nouveau 20, Wember 609, Weill 58.
