ALPHONSE MUCHA FIGURES DECORATIFS. 1905. Portfolio with 40 plates.

Each plate approximately 18x13 inches. Emile Levy, Paris.
Condition varies, generally B+. 40 plates, loose as issued, within illustrated boards.
When he finished illustrating Documents Decoratifs Mucha rightly felt he had fulfilled his role as art teacher to the world. And yet his contract with the Librairie Centrale des Beaux Arts stipulated that he owed them 40 more drawings. Although it took the reluctant Mucha 4 years, he fulfilled this contractual obligation to his publisher and produced Figures Decoratives. Some might sense in the project that Mucha, who was getting ready to move to America and had begun focussing more on his painting, was attempting to hastily complete the work-the images are all monochromatic, mainly academic nudes and girls in their ethnic Moravian costumes. However Mucha remains a remarkable draughtsman, and if anything this work presages his growing nostalgia for his native country that would culminate in what he considered to be his magnum opus, The Slav Epic. Mucha p. 138.