ALPHONSE MUCHA (1860-1939) SALON DES CENT. 1896. 23 7/8x16 3/8 inches. Condition B+: minor repaired tears and creases along bottom edge; minor repaired tears in top corners and along top edge. Hand-signed and numbered. This poster represents the start of a long collaboration between Mucha and La Plume, the influential magazine with the associated exhibition hall that played such a prominent role in the poster scene in fin-de-siècle Paris. One year after he designed this poster, the magazine dedicated an entire issue to Mucha and gave him a one-man show. In that issue of the magazine, publisher Leon Deschamps describes what he saw when he visited Mucha while he was working on this poster. He recalled that the poster design he saw featured "a half-nude woman, her inclined head resting nonchalantly on one hand, her golden hair curling like a halo in rich arabesques -- those famous 'macaroni' which tomorrow would be celebrated and copied by all the apes of art -- a divine languor lingering over the clean outlines of her face, the whole emanating an indefinable charm." At the time Mucha protested that the poster wasn't finished but Deschamps inserted himself into the genius-process and insisted, "print it as it is and you will produce a masterpiece of the illustrative decorative poster" (La Plume-Mucha Special Issue, 1897, p.4). All of La Plume's Salon des Cent posters were available for sale to the public. Regular copies were generally sold for 2.5 francs, but they also produced some deluxe editions, on Japan paper or vellum. In addition to being printed on special paper, these deluxe editions were signed by the artists and numbered (although no print run was ever expressed, it is universally believed that the number was 50). This image is number 23 of the deluxe, vellum edition. Rennert/Weill 12 (var. 1). Rennert / Weill 12.
