Art Nouveau master's works on display at Flagler Museum in Palm Beach

Kristina Webb, Palm Beach Daily News

March 6, 2024 at 5:01 AM·4 min read

A collection of works from the man considered the Master of Art Nouveau is the featured winter exhibition at the Henry Morrison Flagler Museum.

The work of Alphonse Mucha can be seen through April 14 at the museum, which is the historic home of Henry Flagler, one of the titans of the Gilded Age.

It is that connection to the Gilded Age that made Mucha a great choice for an exhibition at the Flagler Museum, said Campbell Mobley, Flagler Museum curator.

“For this show, we’re looking at the same time period that we speak about here at the Flagler Museum as it was in Paris,” she said. “It was a really beautiful synthesis, talking about some of these influences in culture and society at that time.”

Flagler Museum, Winter Exhibition, Alphonse Mucha: Master of Art Nouveau. On View through April 14, 2024. Both Mucha and Henry Flagler were titans of the Gilded age.

More: Memory Lane: Famous for playing Rip Van Winkle on stage, actor was fixture in Palm Beach

The Flagler Museum, which Flagler built for his third wife and named Whitehall for her family home in North Carolina, was built between 1900 and 1902, during a time when Mucha was very active.

The Gilded Age refers to the period in the late 19th and early 20th centuries where there was rapid economic growth, industrialization and grand displays of wealth — characterized both in Flagler’s Whitehall and the intricacies of Mucha’s art.

Gismonda, 1894. Color lithograph on paper mounted on linen (with remarque by Mucha at bottom right) at the Flagler Museum, Winter Exhibition, Alphonse Mucha: Master of Art Nouveau. On view through April 14, 2024.

“I always enjoy seeing who were the influences, what was going on in Paris at the time,” Mobley said. “All of our architects, our artists, our designers here in America, they went over there to study the Beaux-Arts style.”

Because so many of the key figures in art and architecture moved through Paris at that time, there are familiar faces between Mucha’s work and others from that period. One of Mucha’s favorite models, French actress Sarah Bernhardt, featured frequently in other artists’ works from the early 1900s, Mobley said.

French actress Sarah Bernhardt, depicted here in a 1903 color lithograph, was one of Alphonse Mucha's favorite models.

One of Mucha’s breakout pieces featured Bernhardt. The poster, created by Mucha for a play in which Bernhardt performed, featured the name of the play, “Gismonda,” with Bernhardt standing in an intricately detailed robe and holding a palm frond. The name of the theater was at the bottom.

As Flagler created Whitehall to be a place of inspiration and culture for all, so, too, did Mucha create art to inspire, using his posters to turn the streets of Paris into open-air galleries, Mobley said.

Alphonse Mucha, Czechoslovakian Bank Notes: 10, 20, 50, and 100 koruns, 1919-1929, Color prints on paper Flagler Museum, Winter Exhibition, Alphonse Mucha: Master of Art Nouveau.

"Mucha's art was incredibly accessible," she said. "The city of Paris was full of people, and his art was being plastered all over the streets. There was that nature that art wasn't just for a certain group of people, it was everybody and everyone could learn from it."

While the nature of Mucha's artwork was public, he had no way of knowing just how popular it would become, that it would be stolen off of walls, destined for museums, Mobley said.

Alphonse Mucha's art was 'incredibly accessible' in its day, plastered along the streets of Paris advertising products and plays. Here Lefevre-Utile Flirt Biscuits, an 1899 color lithograph.

Among the exhibition's pieces — all of which come from the collection of Raj K. Dhawan of Los Angeles — are proofs and sketches of Mucha's posters, where the artist's process can be seen, Mobley said.

One of her favorite pieces is a poster for Flirt biscuits, a brand of cookie. On the poster, a man looks longingly at a woman, who coyly looks away.

"There are these little intricate moments," she said of the poster, noting the detail of the brand's name, LeFevre Utile, on the fence behind the couple.

Flagler Museum, Winter Exhibition, Alphonse Mucha: Master of Art Nouveau is on view through April 14.

"I encourage everyone to really go through the show and take your time, because you're going to see a piece and come back again and again, and you'll see something different every time," Mobley said. "You can really study the pieces. They're just spectacular."

The design and layout of the exhibition itself honors Mucha's intricate work by using the picture rail as a boundary, because there are many borders in Mucha's pieces, she said.

"So we've essentially re-created a version of that in the gallery," Mobley said. "You're kind of immersed into this Mucha painting. When you come into the space, it's colorful. It's dynamic. And it really is a good ambiance to immerse yourself into the subject."