?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000
PRIVAT LIVEMONT (1861-1936) VAN HOUTEN'S COCOA. 1897. 30 1/2 x 12 1/2 inches. L. van Leer, Amsterdam. Condition B+: replaced top and bottom margins; repaired tears in margins and image. Japan. To say that Privat Livemont was the Belgian Alphonse Mucha is only superficially correct. They were both masters of the Art Nouveau style and clearly shared the same adoration of the female image and delighted in ornamentation. Livemont designed his first poster in 1890, five years before Mucha designed Gismonda. What makes their work fundamentally different is their palettes. Livemont focuses on light pastel tones with greens and blues. Also typical of his work is the concept of white outlines, a design element he invented, that serves 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." This is the very rare English version. DFP II 1065 (var), Wine Spectator 83 (var), Chocolate p. 45 (var).
