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Lot Essay
Born in Ivančice in what is now Czechia, Alphonse Mucha began his artistic training in Prague and Munich before moving to Paris to enroll in the Académie Julien in 1888. Mucha is best remembered for the prominent role he played in shaping the aesthetics of French Art Nouveau at the turn of the century. In December of 1894, while the artist was at Lemercier’s printing workshop doing a favor for a friend, a call came in from Sarah Bernhardt, the greatest actress of her generation, who urgently needed a poster designed for her next performance. With the regular Lemercier artists on holiday, the printer turned to Mucha in desperation. It was a moment of happenstance that would change the artist’s life. While he had been working in relative obscurity for several years, Mucha’s poster for Bernhardt’s production of Gismonda rocketed the artist to near-immediate fame. Though the printer was hesitant about Mucha's design because of its new, unconventional style, ‘La divine Sarah’ loved the image and the public followed suit. The posters immediately became collector’s items, and collectors went so far as to bribe bill posters and cut the posters down under cover of night in order to obtain them. As a result, Le style Mucha, as Art Nouveau was known in its earliest days, was born.
The present drawing finds the artist returning to a pose he had first worked out with a model in his studio circa 1900-1902 (fig. 1), and later expanded into the cover he designed for L'Habitation Pratique, an interior design magazine, which was published during the first decade of the 20th century. Executed in 1929, this work dates to the latest period of Mucha's career, following his return to Czechia, and only one year after he had completed his late masterpiece The Slav Epic in 1928. As Mucha moved away from commercial work in the second half of his career to focus on his patriotic history paintings, he traveled through Russia and Poland to the Balkans, making sketches and taking photographs to document what he saw. As a result, Slavic costume, themes, and decorative elements became increasingly common in his work from this period even outside of The Slav Epic. In the present work, this is reflected in the design on the cushion on which this figure leans, which is inspired by Eastern European folk art decoration. In this, the present drawing hews closer to the original photograph than the design worked out from the same pose for L'Habitation Pratique, which omits the cushion used by the model in the photograph for a simpler draped pillar. He has also modernized the figure’s hairstyle for this drawing, though the artist’s recognizably sinuous Art Nouveau line is still apparent in the subtle touches of yellow he has used in the background.
We are grateful to the Mucha Foundation for confirming the authenticity of this work, which is accompanied by a certificate dated 18 February 2026.
The present drawing finds the artist returning to a pose he had first worked out with a model in his studio circa 1900-1902 (fig. 1), and later expanded into the cover he designed for L'Habitation Pratique, an interior design magazine, which was published during the first decade of the 20th century. Executed in 1929, this work dates to the latest period of Mucha's career, following his return to Czechia, and only one year after he had completed his late masterpiece The Slav Epic in 1928. As Mucha moved away from commercial work in the second half of his career to focus on his patriotic history paintings, he traveled through Russia and Poland to the Balkans, making sketches and taking photographs to document what he saw. As a result, Slavic costume, themes, and decorative elements became increasingly common in his work from this period even outside of The Slav Epic. In the present work, this is reflected in the design on the cushion on which this figure leans, which is inspired by Eastern European folk art decoration. In this, the present drawing hews closer to the original photograph than the design worked out from the same pose for L'Habitation Pratique, which omits the cushion used by the model in the photograph for a simpler draped pillar. He has also modernized the figure’s hairstyle for this drawing, though the artist’s recognizably sinuous Art Nouveau line is still apparent in the subtle touches of yellow he has used in the background.
We are grateful to the Mucha Foundation for confirming the authenticity of this work, which is accompanied by a certificate dated 18 February 2026.