This Art Nouveau mirror design is one of the two most sought-after individual plates from Mucha's Documents Décoratifs 1902.
Like the other plates in the portfolio, it was created as a teaching method, "advertising a purely mythical product, which visually encapsulated Mucha's whole oeuvre of commercial design. Although it never appeared as a full-sized poster, it contains all of his classic, stylistic Art Nouveau trademarks - a woman with stylised hair, a decorative halo behind her, dressed in a flowing gown, with fonts grouped at the top and bottom of the image, within a vertical format and with sophisticated decorative elements that support the vertical structure of the design.
In 1900, Mucha was awarded the silver medal at the Paris Universal Exhibition and made a Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur. At the height of his public and professional fame, Mucha designed a collection of 72 plates in which he presented his decorative principles, 'Les Documents décoratifs'. This set can be seen as a manifesto of Art Nouveau style.
Published in 1902 by the Librairie centrale des Beaux-Arts, the work includes drawings of jewellery, wallpaper, stained glass, furniture and crockery, studies of figures and botany, and a selection of Mucha's famous ‘decorative panels’. Collectors today highly seek out these plates.
Nice vintage condition with original signs of authentic patina.
Height: 66cm
Length: 46cm
Width: 2cm
Alfons Maria Mucha, known internationally as Alphonse Mucha, was a Czech painter, illustrator, and graphic artist who lived in Paris during the Art Nouveau period. He is best known for his distinctly stylised and decorative theatrical posters, particularly Sarah Bernhardt's. He also produced illustrations, advertisements, decorative panels, and designs that became among the best-known images of the period.
In the second part of his career, at the age of 43, he returned to his homeland of the Bohemia-Moravia region in Austria and devoted himself to painting a series of twenty monumental canvases known as The Slav Epic, depicting the history of all the Slavic peoples of the world. He painted this series between 1912 and 1926. In 1928, on the 10th anniversary of the independence of Czechoslovakia, he presented the series to the Czech nation. He considered it his most important work. It is now on display in Prague.