?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 5,000 - $ 7,500
PRIVAT LIVEMONT (1861-1936) LE CACAO VAN HOUTEN. 1897. 603/4x25 inches. Luan Leer, Brussels. Condition A-: restoration, creases and minor foxing in margins; tears along horizontal folds. Although Privat Livemont is often considered Mucha's Belgian alter ego, he was by no means Mucha's disciple. Livemont's first poster dates from 1890, five years before Mucha designed Gismonda. What they have in common is the same adoration of the female image and sense of ornamentation. What makes their work fundamentally different is their palettes. Livemont focuses on light pastel tones with greens and blues and his work is punctuated by white outlines that serve to make his figures really stand out against the background. This classic Art Nouveau image is one of Livemont's best designs and was praised as early as 1898 in L'Estampe et l'Affiche: "It's a suave young lady, with a wild head of hair, lifting, in a graceful manner, a cup of steaming cocoa, whose escaping vapors frame this delectable painting. A light and silky garment in yellow, clear and green tints, with here and there some chrysanthemums strewn about as usual, reveals to the spellbound eye the pure lines of a young and graceful body." (p.16). DFP II 1065, Wine Spectator 83.
