This work, which glorified the artist, is accompanied by the legend of the appearance of a poster spontaneously on the last night of 1894. But the beautiful version, perhaps, is the wise directing of Bernard herself, promoting the triumph of a hitherto unknown illustrator.
It is known that the competition for a poster to the staging of the drama by Viktorien Sardou was announced back in October 1894. However, the actress was not satisfied with the proposed projects. For Mucha, participation in the contest was an accident that changed his fate.
After the appearance of the Gismond poster on the streets, which stunned Parisians with its originality, the artist became famous so that his name occupied the pages of the French press for several weeks. Such fame and recognition could console not only the debutant, but also the most ambitious master. Sarah Bernard is presented in a costume of the last act of drama, during a procession in a procession with a palm branch.
At the preliminary sketches the background was tightly filled, and the branch was just a small detail. In the final version, the branch is doubled and becomes part of the compositional intrigue, repeating the vertical of the female figure. Already in the first poster, a technique that has become traditional in the poster art of the Fly is defined – a semicircle or a full disk behind a woman’s head, filled with flowers, text, ornament or imitating an arched opening.
The actress highly appreciated this composition and used it more than once: in the program of tours in Great Britain in 1895, in 1896 – during a tour of America, then the program of the Sarah Bernard Theater was decorated with it, and later, in 1899 and 1903, she accompanied others. performances.
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