Alfons Mucha - Cover Of l'Estampe Moderne - Lithograph

Alfons MUCHA (1860-1939)
Cover of L'Estampe moderne
1898
Lithograph
41×31 cm
Signed lower left in the plate "Mucha"

The end of the 19th century saw the development of a real craze for the art of printmaking, evidenced by the launch of several specialized art periodicals such as L’Image, Les Maîtres de l’affiche, Les Peintres-graveurs, L’Estampe et l’Affiche or L’Estampe moderne. 
Published monthly between May 1897 and April 1899, the latter aims to make the art of printmaking accessible to all. For the price of 3.50 francs, each issue includes 4 original unpublished prints in the format 31 x 41 cm, adorned in the margin with the blind stamp of the magazine (Lugt L.2790). A snake accompanies each plate, indicating the name of its author and its title with sometimes an extract from a poem or literary text in relation.
The 24 issues of L'Estampe moderne published represent a total of 100 prints, including those offered as a bonus to subscribers, for a limited edition of 2000 copies in current edition on vellum and 150 proofs on Japanese paper. Executed by the main artist-engravers of the time, the plates, mostly lithographs, reflect the two major artistic currents cohabiting at the end of the century, naturalism and symbolism. Some of them offer rarer testimony to a young movement then in full swing, Art Nouveau, as well as the cover of the magazine, entrusted to the Czechoslovakian artist Alfons Mucha. It represents an allegory of drawing in the guise of a young woman gracefully holding a pencil holder. The copy that we are selling served as the frontispiece to the first of the two volumes linking all the issues of L'Estampe moderne.

Lithograph sold framed.