Page:Historical paintings of the Slavic nations by Alfons Mucha (1921).pdf/12

 Tahitian paintings before they were placed on tentative exhibition.

Successful as were his illustrations, Alfons Mucha's position in art was not, however, definitely established in the popular mind until the appearance upon the walls of Paris of his remarkable series of posters for Madame Sarah Bernhardt’s dramatic productions at the Théâtre de la Renaissance. Beginning with Gismonda in 1894, and continuing for some half dozen years with Camille, La Samaritaine, Izeyl, Lorenzaccio, and the more forceful and effective Médée, these posters, as well as the costumes and scenery for the plays, which were likewise designed by Mucha, marked an epoch in the history of contemporary decorative art.

The vogue of Alfons Mucha’s work in fact coincided with, and contributed its exotic charm to a general rebirth of the decorative and the stylistic as opposed to the realistic tendencies of aesthetic expression. The veritable initiator of the movement was Galland, now a comparatively forgotten man, who may be called the last of the classicists and the first of the moderns. And after Galland came Chéret, the Watteau of the poster, ever delicate, spirited, and typically Parisian; Grasset, who successfully assimilated influences Japanese and Teutonic, Carlos Schwabe, the Swiss mystic, and Mucha, Ruty, and others whose work was different, yet whose aims were essentially similar. It is these men who to-day must be considered the founders of what is popularly known as l’Art nouveau. It was their gift of style, their mastery of purely decorative motifs, that in due course led to the formation of such organizations as the Munich and Vienna Secessions, and to the creation of those innumerable arts and crafts centres at the head of which rightfully stands the Wiener Werk-