Documents Decoratifs: Oriental Poppies

1890s

Advertising posters for champagne, biscuits and bicycles

The success of the Bernhardt posters brought him commissions for advertising posters: JOB cigarette papers, Ruinart and Moët & Chandon champagne, Lefèvre-Utile biscuits, Nestlé baby food, Idéal Chocolate, La Trappistine brandy, and Waverly and Perfect bicycles. His posters showed almost entirely beautiful women in lavish settings, their hair curling in arabesques.

20 December 1899

“Le Pater” is published

Wishing to be recognised as a serious artist and philosopher, he gave a pictorial expression to every line of the Lord’s Prayer in a book published by Henri Piazza in an edition of only 510 copies; he considered it his printed masterpiece and said he had put his soul into it. The original watercolours were shown in the Austrian pavilion at the 1900 Exposition Universelle.

c. 1899 – 1900

A trip to the Balkans for sketches

As soon as the project was accepted, Mucha left for the Balkans to sketch costumes, ceremonies and architecture, which he put into his work for the pavilion.

1900

Exhibition: Exposition Universelle of 1900

1900

Sarah Bernhardt defends his Czech origins

His foreign name caused much speculation in the French press, which distressed him; Sarah Bernhardt declared in La France that Mucha was a Czech from Moravia not only by birth and origin but also by feeling, conviction and patriotism.

1902

“Documents décoratifs” is published

The Central Library of Fine Arts published his book of seventy-two watercolour plates with designs for brooches and other pieces, with arabesques, vegetal forms and incrustations of enamel and coloured stones, showing how floral and natural forms could be used in decoration.