Setting his sights on a traditional academic artist's career,
Mucha left Munich in 1888 for Paris in order to continue his
training at the Academie Julian. Tireless studies in botanical
gardens, boulevards, markets and railway stations - where he
would capture perspectives, gestures and movements in his
sketch-books - enabled him to develop, in addition, a virtuosity
as a graphic artist. During the early 1890s, it was this that
secured him a living as a talented, albeit conventional,
illustrator for magazines and fashion journals. His breakthrough
came with his first lithograph poster for Sarah Bernhardt and
her Theatre de la Renaissance. The anecdote attached to this is
pithy enough - the emergency commission executed more or less
overnight - but it is now somewhat hackneyed and its absolute
truth no longer taken for granted; still, there is no doubt that
it did represent a turning point in his career. The poster in
question, advertising Victorien Sardou's Gismonda, appeared on
the streets of Paris in the first week of January, 1895, and
caused a sensation. The novel format - narrow and upright - with
its almost lifesize likeness of the celebrated tragic actress,
produced a singularly dramatic effect and impressed all who saw
it with its wealth of well-chosen colour. The basis of the motif
was the solemn procession scene from the final act of the play,
which also determined the stylistic conception of the poster:
the sumptuous, priestly-vestment-like costume, the symbolic
palm-frond and the mosaic-like background with its hint of a
halo all suggest a sacred atmosphere, reflecting not least the
veneration of the actress as a cult figure, the muse of the
belle epoque.
This theatrical poster continues even today to be adduced time
and again as a prime example of the modern conception of the
poster; for Mucha, it represented a surprising step
- in view of his earlier work - towards an inimitable personal
style. The pictorial representation of her dramatic art had such
a persuasive effect on Sarah Bernhardt that she immediately
signed an exclusive contract with him for six years. The
theatrical posters he produced during this period
- La Dame aux Camillas (1896), Lorenzaccio (1896),
La Samaritaine (1897), Medee (1898), Hamlet (1899) and
Tosca (1899)
- form a cycle in themselves. With their narrow format - mostly
two metres high - their frontal view with its stylized outline,
their lettering in the upper and lower sections of the picture
and the ornamental structuring of the field, they all obey a
unitary stylistic and compositional principle. Mucha understood
how to depict the fascination which Sarah Bernhardt, as the lead
player in her productions, used to exercise on the stage. The
posters he created for her spread her popularity far beyond the
borders of France.
Until 1901 Mucha was responsible not only for Bernhardt's
posters but also for the stage sets and costumes of her Theatre
de la Renaissance. This overwhelming success, which also brought
him considerable social prestige, determined the nature and
direction of his work for years. It could be said that he was
predestined for this work ever since his first artistic
employment: from 1879 to 1881 he had worked as a junior in a
Viennese studio specialising in stage sets. There is no doubt
that he understood how to arrange scenic events in an effective
manner. Conversely, the theatre was also a source of inspiration
for him. It gave him the ideas for the symbolic gesture-language
of his figures and their grandiosely fantastical costumes.
It was on this foundation that Mucha built a style which
successfully united the elements of various epochs with
contemporary Art Nouveau decorative art. A further source was
provided by the centuries-old tradition of sacred art: having
grown up in a Roman Catholic environment, Mucha had been
fascinated since childhood by church ornaments and religious
rites and ceremonies. These impressions were reflected in the
sacred aura radiated in varying degrees by many of his posters.
Thus it is not just the attitude and costume of individual
figures that are reminiscent of the depictions of saints in
medieval, Baroque and neo-Gothic art; ornamental details, too,
such as the recurrent motif of a halo-like circle behind the
head, the mosaic patterns and the crosses are all unmistakably
drawn from the field of religious art. In addition, Mucha, in
common with many other artists of the time, was unable to ignore
the influence of Far Eastern art, newly rediscovered as it was
towards the end of the 19th century. Above all, the Japanese
woodcut, with its linear emphasis together with its exploitation
and stylistic reshaping of the forms of nature, was to point the
way ahead for the exponents of Art Nouveau. However, the most
fertile soil for Mucha's art was the Symbolist movement.
