The Artist and the Actress: Alphonse Mucha’s Art Nouveau Posters

By 1894, Alphonse Mucha had been living in Paris for six years, an unremarkable Czech illustrator making a modest income. A chance encounter with one of the most popular actresses of the day would soon propel his art onto the world stage. On Boxing Day 1894, Mucha was finishing some work at Lemercier, a print house, when actress Sarah Bernhardt called. With the regular artists out enjoying festivities, Mucha accepted Bernhardt's commission for a theatrical poster advertising her role in Victorien Sardou’s Gismonda , to be produced in time for the New Year. The Gismonda posters appeared in the streets of Paris on New Year’s Day 1895 and caused an immediate sensation 1 . Posters were already popular in Paris: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s Moulin Rouge: La Goulue (1891) sparked a trend for posters with bright, bold colours and playful typography. However, Mucha’s poster broke the mould. Its long, scroll-like form, ornamentation and pale colouring were novel, becoming a precursor to Art Nouveau 2 . Picked out in peach, ochre, and pale green, Sarah Bernhardt is depicted dressed in an undulating robe intricately patterned with floral motifs. The whiplash curves of ornamentation, effected in a sombre, elegant palate, is a defining feature of Art Nouveau. Bernhardt immediately hired Mucha as her artistic director. 3 By 1900 he had risen from minor illustrator to one of Paris’s most sought-after artists, exhibiting extensively at the Universal Exhibition: “the greatest event of the century” 4 . Bernhardt, for her part, was immortalised as an icon in the artist's unmistakable style.

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