Gismonda

The story of Gismonda

Sarah Bernhardt walks toward you in a Byzantine gown, holding a palm frond, under an arch of mosaic and her own name in letters the size of her head. Mucha drew it in a week over Christmas 1894 because the printer's regular artists were on holiday, and when the posters went up on the streets of Paris on New Year's Day, people cut them off the walls. Bernhardt signed him to a six-year contract. It is the moment Art Nouveau stopped being a style and became a craze, and every ornate poster since owes it something.

On a wall, Gismonda is tall, narrow, and surprisingly soft. The colors are muted gold, olive, dusty rose, and the pale tones of the gown, with a mosaic halo behind the head, so it is a warm, quiet presence rather than a bright one. It suits a hallway, a stairwell, a bedroom, a dressing room, or a bathroom with a tall wall, and it fits Art Nouveau, Victorian, Parisian, and layered eclectic interiors. The original poster was well over six feet tall, so this is one to go big on: the Extra Large at 36 × 46 in comes closest to the street-poster scale, the Large at 24 × 30.7 in is a striking piece for a landing, and the Medium at 16 × 20.4 in works between two doors.

Mucha's The Four Seasons and Zodiac are the decorative panels that followed once he was famous. Our studio's Winter Muse is a modern piece in the same tall, ornamental spirit. More from Alphonse Mucha.

Printed in our studio from a public-domain photograph of an original lithograph, keeping the flat, slightly grainy ink of a stone-printed poster rather than cleaning it into a digital illustration.