Lady with camellias by Alphonse Mucha

Lady with camellias by Alphonse Mucha

The playbill of A. Dumas’s play “The Lady with Camellias” at the Renaissance Theater 1896 Sarah Bernard first appeared in the image of Margarita Gautier on the stage in 1881, then restored the performance in 1896 in her own theater. It is known that the actress was extremely moved by the story of a passionate and generous courtesan who sacrificed personal happiness for the secular success and career of her lover. In the same tragic way, in her personal fate ended the affair with the Belgian prince Henri de Lien. The wedding did not take place.

Sarah retreated before the desperate resistance of his titled relatives and found solace in motherhood. The son of the actress and the prince, Maurice, had neither monarchical claims, nor even Belgian citizenship, but became for her the only support and faithful friend until the end of her days. “The Lady of Camellias” is estimated as the most perfect of the famous works of Alphonse Mucha.

It successfully embodies all the characteristic features of its “style”: compositional accuracy and organic agreement of every detail with the whole, the elegance of a linear pattern that treats a clear outline of the profile, the wavy rhythm of the folds of clothing; immaculately rhythmicized inscription and curtain drapey, giving an enchanting spectacle of complex lilac and silver tones in the background

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