ALPHONSE MUCHA (1860-1939) SALON DES CENT. 1896. 24 1/2x17 inches, 62 1/4x43 1/4 cm. F. Champenois, Paris. Condition B+: repaired tears at edges, some into text; minor creases in margins and image; slight loss of gold pigment in upper image; hinged to mat on verso. Mounted to paper. Matted and framed. 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. While Mucha was designing 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 13, Salon des Cent cover and 19, Meisterplakate 161, Gold 192, Wember 605, Rawls p. 16, Kiehl p. 62, Modern Poster p. 49, Mucha / Bridges A7.
