The Seasons 1897

Alphonse Mucha made these four decorative panels, The Seasons, with lithographic ink on paper. They encapsulate the Art Nouveau style that flourished in Europe at the turn of the twentieth century. Mucha was a Czech artist working in Paris, and his work drew on earlier traditions of allegorical personification. Here, however, instead of conventional figures of nymphs or goddesses, we have modern women. As the art historian Elizabeth Emery has observed, this was a time when the rising middle class had a taste for luxury goods, and the newly developed technologies of color printing allowed advertisers to appeal to this consumer base. Mucha's images were widely used to sell everything from champagne to bicycles. They became so popular they were collected as art in their own right. Ultimately, in studying Mucha, we examine the institutions that produce art, the cultural values that give it meaning, and the economic forces that shape its consumption.