Alphonse Mucha "Job (Variant 3)" Lithograph
$32,500
This lithograph, "Job," was designed by the renowned Alphonse Mucha, and is a striking Art Nouveau update on Michelangelo's sibyls. The young woman pictured, with gems entangled in her swirling hair, appeared in five variants of the original Mucha poster. In this version, "Variant 3," Mucha features a faux mosaic border, teased by the snaking, luscious strands of the woman's golden locks, imbuing the piece with a savvy, sly cheekiness, bordering on provocativeness, as the subject's gaze suggestively finds up just out of the corner of her eye. The posters advertised Jean Bardot's range of wildly popular pure rice rolling papers, which included exotic flavors such as licorice and vanilla.
- Product Details
- Curator's Notes
Item #: YML-19645
Artist: Alphonse Mucha
Printer: F. Champenois, Paris
Circa: 1896-1897
Dimensions: 28.5" height, 24" width (framed); 22" height, 18" width (unframed)
Materials: Paper, Modern giltwood and gesso frame
Signed: “Mucha”
Literature: Lithograph pictured in Alphonse Mucha: The Complete Posters and Panel, by Jack Rennert and Alain Weill, G.K. Hall & Co., Publishers, Boston, pp. 82-85, cat. 15
Variants of this lithograph include examples with four to eight colors, one with raised ink, others bearing French, Greek, Arabic, and Spanish lettering, all on a royal purple or lavender ground. According to Rennert and Weil, this, "Variant 3" of the original image, is one that the eminent Belle Époque dealer and collector, Jane Lady Abdy, referred to as "a secular icon."