79086 - Mucha, Alphonse

Mucha, Alphonse Les Maîtres de l'Affiche Various Artists Les Maîtres de l'Affiche, 1896-1900 Lithographs in color on wove paper 16-3/4 x 12-1/2 x 0-3/4 inches (42.5 x 31.8 x 1.9 cm) (bound volumes) Edited by Imprimerie Chaix, Paris; with their blindstamp on each sheet Including prints by Alphonse Mucha, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Jules Chéret, and others. PROVENANCE: Sotheby's, London, Old Master, Modern & Contemporary Prints, March 28, 2006, lot 289. The lot comprising: Volume One, plate nos. 1-48; Volume Two, plate nos. 49-96; Volume Three, plate nos. 97-144; Volume Four, plate nos. 145-192; Volume Five, plate nos. 193-240. 5 Total Paris at the turn of the twentieth century was a city learning to advertise itself. Along the boulevards, across the façades of cafés and theaters, on the walls of railway stations and the hoardings of construction sites, a new visual language was taking shape. Color spilled onto the streets in great, theatrical gestures. Women danced across advertisements for champagne; cabaret performers beckoned from brightly colored sheets of paper; elegant lettering promised pleasures both ordinary and extravagant. The poster, once a principally functional means of communication, had become something altogether more intoxicating: a public art form, democratic in its audience and unapologetic in its ambition. It belonged to the street, to the passing glance, to the beautiful and fleeting spectacle of modern life. In this exuberant atmosphere, Les Maîtres de l'Affiche (Masters of the Poster) emerged not simply as a publication, but as an extraordinary record of a world in transformation. Conceived under the direction of Jules Chéret and published by the celebrated Parisian printing house Imprimerie Chaix between December 1895 and November 1900, Les Maîtres de l'Affiche captured the great flowering of illustrated poster design at the height of the Belle Époque. Issued by subscription over sixty months, the publication offered four finely executed lithographic reductions of contemporary posters each month, supplemented by sixteen special lithographs created expressly for the series. In its entirety, the undertaking comprised of over 250 plates representing the work of 97 artists, an astonishing anthology of graphic invention. Chéret himself, frequently celebrated as the father of the modern poster, understood perhaps better than anyone the possibilities of this new medium. Through his vision, the commercial image was elevated from the ephemeral to the collectible, its inventive compositions and radiant colors preserved long after the original advertisements had disappeared from the streets. The artists assembled within these pages form a remarkable constellation of late nineteenth-century creativity. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec transformed the smoky interiors of Montmartre into compositions of startling psychological immediacy, his silhouettes and expressive lines capturing the electric intimacy of Parisian nightlife. Alphonse Mucha brought an altogether different sensibility, enveloping his subjects in arabesques, flowers, and ornament, their elongated figures embodying the sensuous elegance of Art Nouveau. Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen found beauty in the commonplace, while Pierre Bonnard, Eugène Grasset, and Félix Vallotton explored the expressive possibilities of simplified forms and striking graphic contrasts. Yet the achievement of Les Maîtres de l'Affiche extended beyond the familiar names of French modernism. British and American artists appeared alongside their Continental contemporaries, revealing an international conversation about the relationship between art, commerce, and modern identity. What united them was not a particular style, but a shared understanding that an image could arrest a stranger in the street and, in an instant, create desire. There is something wonderfully paradoxical about the poster's elevation to the status of fine art. These images were born of commerce, intended to sell everything from theatrical performances and bicycles to soap, spirits, and seaside excursions. Their original lives were necessarily brief, vulnerable to the elements, changing fashions, and the relentless accumulation of newer advertisements. Yet the very qualities that made them effective as advertisements also made them enduring works of art: their audacity, their economy of line, their immediacy. In an era increasingly defined by mass production and expanding consumer culture, the poster became an unlikely meeting place of artistic innovation and everyday experience. The streets became galleries without doors, their exhibitions changing almost overnight. Through Les Maîtres de l'Affiche, this ephemeral visual world acquired a more permanent existence, inviting collectors to contemplate what pedestrians had once encountered in passing. Viewed together, the compositions become more than a succession of advertisements. They reveal an entire visual culture, its fashions,