?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,000
GEORGES CLAIRIN (1843-1919) THEODORA/ THEATRE SARAH-BERNHARDT. Circa 1884. 28 7/8x44 3/8 inches. F. Champenois, Paris. Condition B+: minor repaired tears and overpainting in margins and image. Two sheets. Georges Clairin was a successful academic painter and one of Sarah Bernhardt's best friends. His painting of her, with a greyhound at her feet, is one her most famous portraits and was the sensation of the 1876 Salon in Paris. Another of Bernhardt's close friends was the playwright Victorien Sardou. He specialized in historical dramas, which he penned specifically with Bernhardt in mind as the heroine (Fedora, Cleopatra, Gismonda, Theodora and others). For Theodora, Bernhardt commissioned two posters. One, by Manuel Orazi and Francois Gorguet, was a Byzantine mosaic, very intricately designed and rather crowded and confusing in its detail. The other poster, designed by Clairin, is of exceptional historical importance. Previously misdated as circa 1896, this poster, like the design by Orazi-Gorguet, was printed in 1884. Abdy mentions that Clairin did a sketch for the poster (Abdy p. 127), but didn't know that the poster had actually been realized. Had the play been revived in 1896 then only Mucha would have done the design. This shows that, ten years before Alphonse Mucha designed his first poster for Bernhardt's play Gismonda, Clairin devised the design style that would influence Mucha in his work for the actress. The elongated format, the layout of the subject and the typography, the elaborate designs on the actress's robe and the halo above her head are all design elements that Mucha would take to an entirely new level ten years later. Clairin himself was an excellent draughtsman and this image is an elegant poster in and of itself, in addition to being an essential step in the development of the Art Nouveau style.
