Alphonse Mucha's The Seasons

The Seasons was the first set of decorative panels Mucha designed, and it became one of his most popular series. The panel was a new kind of product he worked out with the Paris printer F. Champenois: a poster with no text, made only for decoration and published in large print runs at a modest price. Champenois ran a large printing house on the Boulevard Saint Michel, with three hundred workers and twenty steam presses.

Personifying the seasons was an old idea, found in the Old Masters and in Champenois's own publications; what Mucha added was nymph-like women set against seasonal views of the countryside. Each woman carries one mood: innocent Spring, sultry Summer, fruitful Autumn and frosty Winter. Spring holds a lyre made from a branch with three small birds on it, Summer leans on a grapevine with her feet in shallow water, and Autumn wears a wreath of chrysanthemums as she picks grapes.

Notice the format first. Each panel measures 103 by 54 centimetres, close to twice as tall as it is wide. The panels bear some resemblance to Japanese woodcuts; in Winter, the Mucha Foundation notes, the simple, flat composition shows Mucha's debt to Japanese art. The set did well enough that Champenois asked for at least two more on the same subject, and other decorative series followed: The Flowers, The Arts, The Times of Day, Precious Stones, and The Moon and the Stars.