?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 40,000 - $ 50,000
ALPHONSE MUCHA (1860-1939) LES FLEURS. 1898. 18 3/4x41 inches. [F. Champenois, Paris.] Condition A. These four irresistible allegories of flowers are among the most delicate, and rarest, of the decorative panels Mucha designed. His printer, Champenois, continuously pushed the artist to design more panels, to satisfy the seemingly insatiable demand. In all Mucha designed approximately 18 different sets of decorative panels. These are in many ways his most sensual images, playing a flirtatious graphic game between the women and the flowers that surround them. Mucha's paintings of both the Iris and the Carnation were exhibited in his one-man show at the Salon des Cent in 1897. The aquarelles bore the notice, "to be published by Champenois." Over the course of the next few months Mucha completed the other two images. The set in this format, printed in a run of 1000, sold out so quickly that Champenois printed the series again, in a smaller format with all four images on a single sheet. Rennert/Weill 49, Spirit of Art Nouveau 50, Lendl 69.
![ALPHONSE MUCHA (1860-1939) LES FLEURS. 1898. 18x41 inches. [F. Champenois, Paris.]](https://catalogue.swanngalleries.com/full//476\583476.jpg)
