?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 7,000 - $ 10,000
ALPHONSE MUCHA (1860-1939) SALON DES CENT. 1896. 24 1/2x15 1/2 inches, 62 1/4x39 1/2 cm. F. Champenois, Paris. Condition B+: minor creases, abrasions and mat staining in margins; minor restoration along vertical and horizontal folds; ink stamp in text. Matted and framed. Mucha's poster design for the Salon des Cent was the start of a long collaboration between the artist and La Plume. One year after he created this poster, the magazine dedicated an entire issue to Mucha and gave him a one-man show. While Mucha was working on this poster, Léon Deschamps, La Plume's publisher, went to visit the artist at his studio. Deschamps recalls that the poster design he saw at that time 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." Mucha protested that the poster wasn't finished, but Deschamps self-aggrandizingly 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). Rennert / Weill 12, Lendl p. 133, Brno 7, Mucha Grand Palais 13, Darmstadt 26, Mucha / Henderson 58, Mucha / Bridges A7, Reade 5, Jiri Mucha p. 94, Triumph des Jugendstils 19 (var), Art Nouveau p. 112, Salon des Cent 19 (var), Spirit of Art Nouveau 18, DFP-II 628 (var), Abdy p. 139, Schardt p. 129.
