“Spring”
This decorative panel printed on silk from 1900, titled “Spring”, is by the Czech artist and founder of the Art Nouveau movement, Alphonse Mucha. It is one of four panels in his Seasons series from 1900.
In this piece, the season of Spring is personified as a beautiful young woman. She stares directly at the viewer in a flowy dress carrying a bouquet of spring flowers. The green dress, as the color of new growth, represents the new life that comes with the season. As with Mucha’s other pieces, the border is part of the art itself and contains classic Art Nouveau motifs. Though familiar to us today, in Mucha’s time they were new and fresh.
In 1896, Mucha had created his first incarnation of Seasons, a decorative set of four panels, with one panel personifying each season. The decorative panels were printed by F. Champenois, Mucha’s publisher in Paris, and were the predecessor to the art poster. It was an intelligent marketing move. People sought to buy all four to complete their collections.
The 1896 series was an immediate success with the public. So much so, that F. Champenois, asked Mucha to create two more sets; one in 1897 and one in 1900, of which this piece belongs. Champenois’s name is written across the bottom of the panel. Mucha’s lithographs, or decorative panels, were the first of their kind. As panels, they allowed Champenois to mass produce Mucha’s work. This made owning art accessible to anyone who wanted it.
Mucha said “I was happy to be involved in an art for the people and not for private drawing rooms. It was inexpensive, accessible to the general public, and it found a home in poor families as well as in more affluent circles.” The decorative panels were printed on both paper and on silk.
This particular lithograph of “Spring“, printed on silk, is in a private collection.
For more on Alphonse Mucha, please visit his short biography here.
You can find more artists to learn about here.
