Ever Fabulous

Here's another one of those seldom seen preliminary studies by the ever fabulous Mucha from the ever fabulous Art Nouveau period.

Alphonse Mucha — preliminary study for an illustration — 1898

O-O-O-Ophelia

Another contemporary of Mucha (among hundreds of others, of course) was Joseph Kirkpatrick. While he is one of those not particularly associated with the Art Nouveau, his work was romantic and lyrical as was the case of so many other artists of the time. Perhaps because that was what the art academies and exhibitions were fond of, artists gravitated to similar subjects and manners — Hamlet's Ophelia being a favorite fantasy.

  

Joseph Kirkpatrick — Ophelia — 1896

Exquisite Flow

A contemporary of Mucha was John White Alexander who also infused an exquisite flow into his paintings though he was not truly an artist of the Art Nouveau, but rather was distinguished as a portrait painter, illustrator and Symbolist painter. The image below is seen here and there, but this is the warmest reproduction I've seen, which I think gives strength to the mysterious light source.

John White Alexander — Isabella & the Pot of Basil — 1897

Handsome

This is a handsome digital medium rendering, utilizing some Mucha/Art Nouveau styling, brought to an androgynous slightly manga level, successfully giving new life to an old style.

© 2009 Shannon van Muijden — Declan O'Dwyer 

Girl with Teapot

I don't know of an illustrative purpose for this Art Nouveau ink and watercolor rendering — it's probably 'just' a framable decorative.

Hans Christiansen —Girl with Teapot — 1893

Special Number

An Art Nouveau cover from 105 years ago:

Vogue — December 5, 1907

Girl in a Glass

Leo Putz — Girl in a Glass — 1902

Angel of Death

Well, this painting is only slightly morbid, as the Victorian era/Art Nouveau artists could be.

Carlos Schwabe —The Angel of Death — 1900

Chestnut Trees

An astounding use of color from the art nouveau period:

Carl Strathmann — Chestnut Trees — circa 1900

Mirror Alphabet

This post is dedicated to Nikita, whose email has inspired an interest in ambigrams. This is a mirror sort of ambigram of a decorative alphabet. I can't credit its clever creator as it's been floating around my image morgue for years and years, before I ever thought to mark sources. It has an Art Nouveau flavor.

UPDATE: This lovely ambigram was created by Scott Kim, PuzzleMaster, and his website can be accessed by clicking here.

Thanks nagfa!

The Motor Pump

Ads showcasing a pretty girl that is totally irrelevant to the product advertised is a tradition that goes back a ways. Nice Art Nouveau.

Tamagno — La Moto-Pompe — ca 1898

A Comedy 2-Nite

Ah, a non-Mucha art nouveau dame . . . and a comedy 2-nite!

Comedy Theatre — poster — 1906

Expression of the Artist's Soul

Sorry to be jumping backward here, but I overlooked one more important example of a Mucha poster and its reference photograph.

Mucha — poster for DeForest Phonofilm — 1927

Mucha himself and his daughter, Jaroslava

— reference for poster — 1926

Larry MacDougall put it well in his comment, when he said, "Of course the photographs are lovely, but you can really see how (Mucha) transfuses them with magic. And of course like all magic, only the magician knows how it is done."

And to put it further into perspective, here is a quote for an article about the subject:

Comparing Mucha's design with the photos from which he worked gives us useful insight into the artistic process. It is clear that no photograph was ever slavishly copied; it represented only a point of departure from which inspiration takes over. With his meticulous attention to detail, Mucha certainly used the pictures to check things such as the precise position of fingers on a hand holding something—often a stumbling block for even otherwise competent artists—as well as for a correct perspective and spatial relations between people and objects. Beyond that, the heart of every design is an expression of the artist's soul.

Informative Comparative Look

To some followers of Mucha, these images won't be new. But to others, it could be an informative comparative look at Mucha's reference photos and the resulting works.

Mucha

— Poster for The Spring Festival of Song & Music in Prague —

1914

Mucha — Emerald — 1909

Mucha — Poster for The Regional Fair at Ivančice — 1912

Mucha — A plate from Documents Décoratifs — 1899

Mucha — study for the cover of Cloches de Noël et de Pâques —1900

Hey Larry!

That Mucha Look

Alphonse Mucha, world renowned for his Art Nouveau graphics, used photographs of models for much of his reference material. But sometimes the photographs themselves were beautiful and had that Mucha look about them—such as this inspirational 1919 image he used as a study for a bank note design.

By Georges

Georges Jules Victor Clairin was a French painter and illustrator, working in the heady days of the Art Nouveau movement. Like Mucha, Clairin was drawn to Sarah Bernhardt, in more ways than one.

Poster of Sarah Bernhardt as Theodora by Georges Clairin

Theatrical setting of Bernhardt as Theodora by Georges Clairin

Theatrical setting of La Vierge d'Avila (The Virgin of Avila)

by Georges Clairin

Frontis

A sumptuous frontis piece for a magazine by Mucha, 1897:

And the preliminary drawing:

Four Seasons Panneaux

Many of us have often seen Mucha's finished art for the Four Seasons, but his unused designs and sketches for the panels are a bit more obscure. As always, I admire an artist's sketches as much as finished art, full of vibrant energy, and Mucha's art is always fabulous.

Exposition Internationale

Once again I'm in deadline crunch phase. I'll post here and there some individual images that have been scanned and waiting, but I won't have time for much explanation.

Here, a poster by one of the grand masters of art nouveau, following in the immediate wake of Mucha's upswell of technique, Henri Privat-Livemont. This image was created in 1896, for publication in 1897. Very majestic.

Privat-Livemont — Exposition Internationale — 1896

Italian Art Nouveau

I know I use the word 'beautiful' an awful lot in describing the images that I post, and that's because that's just what they are. This is a beautiful and elegant Italian Art Nouveau poster by Adolfo Hohenstein from 1898. Love that typography, oh, and that little devil guy.