Week 9 Art Nouveau - A History of Graphic Design

A HISTORY OF
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Chapter 11 – Art Nouveau
SUMMARY
This chapter focuses on art nouveau, the transitional style that bridged the aesthetic confusion of the Victorian era and
modernism. Art nouveau thrived from about 1890–1910 and encompassed all the design arts—architecture, furniture,
product design, fashion, and graphics. Frequent design motifs included vine tendrils, flowers (such as the rose and
lily), birds (particularly peacocks), and the human female form. The main identifying visual quality of art nouveau was
an organic, plantlike line. Because of its decorativeness, some observers see art nouveau as an expression of latenineteenth-century
decadence; others, however, noting art nouveau’s quest for spiritual and aesthetic values, see it as
a reaction against the retrogression and materialism of the epoch.
Among the numerous sources that have been cited for
art nouveau are the tendrilous, curvilinear networks that
unified Emile Tassel’s townhouse designed by Belgian
architect Baron Victor Horta, and the French symbolist
movement in literature, with its rejection of realism in
favor of the metaphysical and sensuous. Other influences
include William Blake’s book illustration, Celtic
ornament, the rococo style, the Arts and Crafts movement,
Pre-Raphaelite painting, Japanese decorative
design (especially ukiyo-e woodblock prints), as well as
the swirling forms of Vincent van Gogh, the flat color and
stylized organic contour of Paul Gauguin, and the Nabis
group of young artists who explored symbolic color and
decorative patterns.
This chapter covers French and English art nouveau, the
influence of French and English art nouveau in America,
and innovations that took place in Belgium, the Netherlands,
Germany, and Italy. Emphasis is on the design of
posters, books, periodicals, trademarks, and typefaces.
The chapter begins with a survey of Japanese ukiyo-e
woodblock prints, which provided European and North
American artists and designers with new approaches to
space, color, drawing conventions, and subject matter.
European artists drew inspiration from the calligraphic
line drawing, abstraction and simplification of natural
appearances, flat color and silhouettes, unconventional
use of bold black shapes, and decorative patterns, as
well as the practice of reducing subjects to graphic interpretations
that conveyed their essence, and suggestive
impressions rather than detailed depictions. Among the
Japanese artists who made contributions to the genre
were Hishikawa Moronobu, the first master of the ukiyoe
print, Kitagawa Utamaro, unrivaled in his portrayal of
beautiful women, the prolific Katsushika Hokusai, and
Ando Hiroshige, the last great master whose spatial
compositions and ability to capture transient moments
of the landscape inspired the European impressionists.
French art nouveau had its beginnings in Paris in 1881
with Jules Chéret and Eugène Grasset, after a new
French law that lifted censorship restrictions led to a
booming poster industry. Chéret, considered the father
of the modern poster, designed lithographic posters
for music halls, the theater, beverages and medicines,
household products, entertainers, and publications.
The beautiful young archetypal women he featured in
his posters were dubbed Chérettes. Swiss-born Grasset
rivaled Chéret in popularity and is noted for his
total integration of illustration, format, and typography
and what has been called his “coloring-book style,” a
thick black contour drawing that locked forms into flat
areas of color. His flowing line and floral motifs pointed
toward French art nouveau. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
broke new ground in poster design in his posters for
Paris cabarets, with their simple symbolic shapes and
dynamic spatial relationships. His friend and sometimes
rival Théophile-Alexandre Steinlein was a prolific
illustrator who often depicted poverty, exploitation, and
the working class. His commissions included magazine
covers, magazine and book illustrations, sheet music,
and large posters.
But art nouveau found its most comprehensive statement
from 1895 until 1900 in the work of young Czech
artist Alphonse Mucha, whose dominant theme was
a central female figure surrounded by stylized forms
derived from plants and flowers, Moravian folk art, Byzantine
mosaics, and even magic and the occult. Mucha’s
women project an archetypal sense of unreality—exotic,
sensuous, yet maidenlike, they express no specific age,
nationality, or historic period—and their stylized hair patterns
became a hallmark of the era. Pattern books, such
as Combinaisons ornementales produced by Mucha in

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GRAPHIC DESIGN
collaboration with Maurice Verneuli and Georges Auriol,
helped to spread art nouveau
In England, the art nouveau movement was primarily
concerned with graphic design and illustration. In
addition to the sources mentioned above, English art
nouveau was also influenced by Gothic art and Victorian
painting. Aubrey Beardsley and Charles Ricketts were
key figures. Beardsley’s illustrations combined contour
line, textured areas, and black and white shapes into
powerful compositions. Ricketts approached the book
as a total entity, focusing on harmony of binding, end
sheets, title page, typography, ornaments, and illustrations.
His page layouts are lighter and his ornaments and
bindings more open and geometric than William Morris’s
Kelmscott Press books.
Art nouveau was imported to America when Harper’s
magazine commissioned Eugène Grasset to design
covers. The two major American practitioners of art nouveau–inspired
graphic design and illustration were Louis
Rhead, influenced more by French sources such as Grasset,
and William H. Bradley, who was inspired by English
sources, such as the ideals of William Morris and the flat
shapes and stylized contour of Aubrey Beardsley. Bradley’s
work for the Inland Printer and the Chap Book—in
particular his fresh approach to graphic technique and
visual unity of type and image—ignited art nouveau in
America. Other designers and illustrators mentioned
include Ethel Reed, the first American woman to achieve
national prominence as a graphic designer and illustrator;
Edward Penfield, art director for Harper and Brothers
publications from 1891 until 1901; and Maxfield Parrish,
whose illustrations expressed a romantic and idealized
view of the world into the twentieth century.
Innovations in Belgium focused on the work of Henri van
de Velde, an architect, painter, designer, and educator,
whose work evolved from forms inspired by symbols
and plant motifs to rhythmic linear patterns, as shown in
the poster for the concentrated food product Tropon. Van
de Velde called for a new art that would be contemporary
in concept and form but possess the vitality and ethical
integrity of the great decorative and applied arts of the
past. He argued that machine-made objects should be
true to their manufacturing process and not try to appear
handmade. As an art and design adviser, he reorganized
the Weimar Arts and Crafts Institute and the Weimar
Academy of Fine Arts, a preliminary step toward the
formation of the Bauhaus in 1919. Other Belgian graphic
designers added their own variations to the new art,
including Privat Livemont and Gisbert Combaz.
In the Netherlands, the book was one of the principal
expressive mediums of Nieuwe Kunst, as the movement
was called in Dutch. The work reflected a love of order
and geometry, balanced by a penchant for the primitive
and independence from accepted norms. Young artists
brought about an important artistic revival that provided
the seeds for future movements such as de Stijl and art
deco. Chris Lebeau and Jan Toorop, who was born in
Java, were influenced by traditional crafts of the Dutch
East Indies, such as the organic designs of batik. The
binding for De stille kracht (The Quiet Power) is a striking
example of how Lebeau was successful in assimilating
traditional patterns and colors of the East Indies into his
work. The Javanese influence is clear in Toorop’s 1895
poster for Delftsche Slaolie (Delft Salad Oil). And S.H. de
Roos, an exacting designer who found refuge in geometry,
created decorative ornaments derived predominantly
from mathematics.
In Germany, the movement was known as Jugendstil, or
youth style, after Jugend (Youth) magazine. Jugendstil
had strong French and English influences, as well as
strong links to traditional academic art, and the German
interest in medieval letterforms—Gutenberg’s textura
type—continued side by side with art nouveau motifs.
In Italy, Adolfo Hohenstein was seen, like Chéret in
France, as the father of poster design. Italian posters
were characterized by a sensuous exuberance and
elegance. Other contributors to poster design in Italy
were Leopoldo Metlicovitz, Giovanni Mataloni, Marcello
Dudovitch, Franz Laskoff, and Leonetto Capiello.
Art nouveau qualities were also applied to trademarks,
such as La Maison Moderne in France, General Electric
in America, and in Germany, the Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-
Gesellschaft (General Electric Company), or AEG, as
well as the Insel-Verlag trademark, designed by Peter
Behrens. Typeface design was also influenced. Otto Eckmann’s
Eckmannschrift was released in 1900 by Klingspor
Foundry, the first German type foundry to commission
new fonts from artists.

A HISTORY OF
GRAPHIC DESIGN
KEY TERMS (IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE; THE FIRST PAGE NUMBER OF THEIR APPEARANCE IS LISTED)
Ukiyo-e, page 196, “pictures of the floating world.” Defines an art movement of Japan’s Tokugawa period that blended
the realistic narratives of emaki (traditional picture scrolls) with influences from decorative arts. The earliest works were
screen paintings depicting the entertainment districts called “the floating world.” Artists quickly embraced the woodblock
print and collaborated with publishers, block cutters, and printers.
Tokugawa period (1603–1867), page 196, a time of economic expansion, internal stability, and flourishing cultural arts.
During this period of national isolation and few external influences, Japanese art acquired a singular national character.
Shogun, page 196, a Japanese military governor whose power exceeded the emperor’s.
Emaki, page 196, traditional Japanese picture scrolls.
“The floating world,” page 196, Japan’s entertainment districts.
Edo, page 196, early name for what is now modern Tokyo.
Surimono, page 198, privately commissioned prints for special occasions.
Yellow-backs, page 198, cheap novelettes so named for the color of their covers.
Mount Fuji, page 198, occupies a special place in Japanese culture; the ancient Japanese were sun worshipers, and this
3,776-meter (12,000-foot) volcano first catches the rising sun’s rays (Fig. 11-5).
Japonisme, page 200, the late-nineteenth-century Western mania for all things Japanese.
Art nouveau, page 200, an international decorative style that thrived roughly during the two decades (c. 1890–1910) that
girded the turn of the century. It encompassed all the design arts–architecture, furniture and product design, fashion,
and graphics–and consequently embraced posters, packages, and advertisements; teapots, dishes, and spoons; chairs,
door frames, and staircases; and factories, subway entrances, and houses. Art nouveau’s identifying visual quality is
an organic, plantlike line. Vine tendrils, flowers (such as the rose and lily), birds (particularly peacocks), and the human
female form were frequent motifs from which this fluid line was adapted.
Historicism, page 200, the deliberate use or revival of historical styles in contemporary work.
Anachronistic, page 200, something that is out of its proper chronological or historical order, or that may belong to an
earlier time.
French symbolist movement, page 200, a movement in literature of the 1880s and 1890s that led a rejection of realism
in favor of the metaphysical and sensuous. It was an important influence in the Art Nouveau movement and led artists
to symbolic and philosophic attitudes.
Afficheurs, page 201, poster hangers, whose industry benefited from an1881 French law that lifted many censorship
restrictions and allowed posters to be hung anywhere except on churches, at polls, or in areas designated for official
notices.
Chérettes, page 201, beautiful women that adorned many of the posters of Jules Chéret, who introduced a new role
model for women in the late Victorian era. Neither prudes nor prostitutes, these self-assured, happy women enjoyed life
to the fullest, wearing low-cut dresses, dancing, drinking wine, and even smoking in public (Fig. 11-11).
Jules Chéret Museum, page 205, opened in Nice to preserve the work of Jules Chéret.
“Coloring-book style,” page 205, Eugène Grasset’s style of thick black contour drawing locking forms into flat areas of
color in a manner similar to medieval stained-glass windows (Fig. 11-14).
The Studio, page 205, the first of nearly a dozen new 1890s European art periodicals. The April issue reproduced the
work of Aubrey Beardsley and helped to launch his career. Early issues also included work by Walter Crane and Jan

A HISTORY OF
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Toorop (Fig. 11-15).
“The black spot,” page 207, the name given to Aubrey Beardsley’s compositions based on a dominant black form (Fig.
11-21).
The Yellow Book, page 207, Aubrey Beardsley was named art editor for this magazine, whose bright yellow cover on
London newsstands became a symbol for the new and outrageous.
Rodolphe Salis’s Le Chat Noir, page 209, a gathering place for artists and writers that opened in 1881. There, Eugène
Grasset met and shared his enthusiasm for color printing with younger artists: Georges Auriol, Henri de Toulouse-
Lautrec, and fellow Swiss artist Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen.
La Belle Époque (The Beautiful Era), page 209, a term used to describe glittering late-nineteenth-century Paris (Fig. 11-
26).
Le style moderne, page 211, the early name for the new art style emerging in France during the late 1800s. The movement
didn’t get its more recognizable name—art nouveau—until December 1895. That was when Samuel Bing, a longtime
dealer in Far Eastern art and artifacts, while fostering the growing awareness of Japanese work, opened his new
gallery, Salon de l’Art Nouveau, to exhibit arts and crafts by young artists working in new directions.
Le style Mucha, page 213, a term that was often used interchangeably with l’art nouveau, showing that by 1900, Alphonse
Mucha’s work had become pervasive in the development of art nouveau’s graphic motifs.
L’art nouveau, page 213, a term used for the French art nouveau movement.
Jugendstil, page 213, the term used for the new art movement in Germany, named after the magazine Jugend (Youth).
Sezessionstil, page 213, the term used for the new art movement in Austria, named after the Vienna Secession.
Stile floreale or stile Liberty, page 213, the term used for the new art movement in Italy, named after textiles and furnishings
from the London department store located there.
Modernismo, page 213, the term used for the new art movement in Spain.
Nieuwe Kunst, page 213, the term used for the new art movement in the Netherlands. Through this movement, many
young Dutch artists sought new vistas with energy and enthusiasm, encouraged by fresh, optimistic, and progressive
ideals. They brought about an important artistic revival in the Netherlands that provided the seeds for future movements,
such as De Stijl, art deco, and what is now known as the Wendingen style. The book was one of the principal
expressive mediums of this movement. Some special qualities of the movement’s book design are unpredictability, eccentricity,
openness, and innovation, as well as a love for order and geometry balanced by a penchant for the primitive
and independence from accepted norms.
Archetypal, page 213, an ideal example of a certain type.
Combinaisons ornementales (Ornamental Combinations), page 213, a pattern book produced by Alphonse Mucha in
collaboration with Maurice Verneuil and Georges Auriol, which helped to spread the art nouveau style (Fig. 11-39).
GE (General Electric), page 214, trademark of art nouveau origin that has been in continuous use since the 1890s (Fig.
11-41).
Harper’s magazines, page 214, American magazines that commissioned covers from Eugène Grasset and spread the art
nouveau style throughout America (Figs. 11-42 and 11-43).
Bradley: His Book, page 217, an art and literary periodical produced by Will Bradley that began in 1896 (Fig. 11-49).
Chapbooks, page 217, small, crudely printed book from colonial New England named after the traveling peddlers known
as chapmen who sold them. The vigor of these works, with their Caslon types, wide letter spacing, mix of roman, italic,
and all-capital type, sturdy woodcuts, and plain rules, inspired the beginnings of a new direction in graphic arts that
became known as the chapbook style.

A HISTORY OF
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Chapbook style, page 217, a new direction in graphic arts that was inspired by the chapbooks of colonial New England
(Fig. 11-50).
American Chap-Book, page 217, series of twelve little books in the chapbook style designed and written by Will Bradley
for the American Type Founders (Fig. 11-50).
Cercle des XX (Group of Twenty), page 220, a group that formed during the 1880s in Belgium to show progressive art
ignored by the salon establishment, including paintings by Gauguin in 1889 and Van Gogh in 1890 (Fig. 11-59).
Driehoeken bij ontwerpen van ornament (Triangles in the Design of Ornament), page 222, book by J. H. de Groot and
Jacoba M. de Groot that promoted the interest in natural and mathematical forms adapted to stylized decoration.
Providing artists with vivid instructions for the construction of abstract forms based on nature, it demonstrated in fifty
plates accompanied by descriptive texts that almost any imaginable figure could be created from variations of 30- and
45-degree triangles (Fig. 11-66).
Theosophy, page 224, philosophy in which geometry is seen as an ordering principle of the cosmos.
Batik, page 224, a method of dyeing fabric. The parts of the fabric not intended to be dyed are covered with removable
wax.
Klingspor Foundry, page 226, the first German type foundry to commission new fonts from artists, in 1900 it released
Eckmann’s Eckmannschrift, which created a sensation and thrust this small regional foundry into international prominence
(Figs. 11-77); see also (Fig. 12-29).
Eckmannschrift, page 226, type designed by Otto Eckmann, drawn with a brush instead of a pen, which was a conscious
attempt to revitalize typography by combining characteristics from both medieval and roman types. First released by
the Klingspor Foundry in 1900 (Fig. 11-77); see also (Fig. 12-29).
KEY PEOPLE AND THEIR MAJOR CONTRIBUTIONS (IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE; THE FIRST PAGE NUMBER OF THEIR
APPEARANCE IS LISTED)
Hishikawa Moronobu (1618–94), page 196, Widely respected as the first master of the ukiyo-e print, he was a book illustrator
who used Chinese woodcut techniques and reached a large audience. In addition to actors and courtesans, his
work presented the everyday lives of ordinary people (Fig. 11-1).
Okumura Masanobu (1686–1764), page 197, among the first artists to move from hand coloring single-color woodcuts
to two-color printing.
Suzuki Harunobu (c. 1725–1770), page 197, introduced full-color prints from numerous blocks, each printed in a different
color, in 1765.
Kitagawa Utamaro (c. 1753–1806), page 197, an unrivaled artist in portraying beautiful women; he has been called
the supreme poet of the Japanese print. His loving observations of nature and human expression resulted in prints
of insects, birds, flowers, and women possessing great beauty and tenderness. His images of Edo’s most renowned
beauties were identified by name. Rather than repeating stereotypes of conventional beauty, he conveyed his subjects’
feelings, based on careful observation of their physical expressions, gestures, and emotional states. His warm yellow
and tan backgrounds emphasized delicate, lighter-toned skin (Fig. 11-3).
Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849), page 197, the most renowned and prolific ukiyo-e artist who produced an estimated
35,000 works during seven decades of ceaseless artistic creation. His work spanned the gamut of ukiyo-e subjects:
album prints; genre scenes; historical events; illustrations for novels; landscape series including views of rivers, mountains,
waterfalls, and bridges; nature studies of flowers, birds, shells, and fish; paintings on silk; sketchbooks; and
privately commissioned prints for special occasions, called surimono. He began his career illustrating yellow-backs. He
was in his seventies when he designed the series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji (Fig. 11-5).

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Ando Hiroshige (1797–1858), page 198, the last great master of the Japanese woodcut. A rival of Hokusai, he inspired
the European impressionists with his brilliant spatial composition and ability to capture the transient moments of the
landscape. In the series Fifty-three Stages of the Tokaido, he illustrated the fifty-three way stations along the Eastern Sea
Road from Edo to Kyoto, capturing subtle nuances of light, atmosphere, and season. He not only observed and captured
the poetic splendor of nature but related it to the lives of ordinary people as well (Figs. 11-6 and 11-7).
Matthew C. Perry, page 199, American commodore whose naval expeditions to Japan, beginning in 1853, led to the
collapse of Japan’s traditional isolationist policies and opened trade with the West.
Samuel Bing (1838–1905), page 200, in 1895 he opened a gallery in Paris called the Salon de l’Art Nouveau, from which
the term art nouveau arose. In addition to Japanese art, “new art” by European and American artists was displayed and
sold there. This gallery became an international meeting place at which many young artists were introduced.
Baron Victor Horta (1861–1947), page 200, a Belgian architect who became the seminal genius of the art nouveau movement.
His 1892 townhouse for Emile Tassel was unified by tendrilous, curvilinear networks unlike anything yet seen in
England or on the Continent.
Jules Chéret (1836–1933), page 201, acclaimed as the father of the modern poster, he was convinced that pictorial
lithographic posters would replace the typographic letterpress posters that filled the urban environment. At the age of
twenty-two he produced a blue and brown poster for Offenbach’s operetta Orphée aux Enters (Orpheus in Hades) in Paris,
but then returned to London, where he soon mastered the more advanced English color lithography. The first poster
from his printing firm, financed by Eugene Rimmel, was a monochromatic design for the theatrical production La Biche
au bois (The Doe in the Woods), starring the twenty-two-year-old Sarah Bernhardt. During the 1870s, he evolved away
from Victorian complexity, simplifying his designs and increasing the scale of his major figures and lettering. His artistic
influences included the idealized beauty and carefree lifestyle painted by Antoine Watteau and Jean-Honoré Fragonard,
the luminous color of Turner, and the winding movement of Giovanni Batista Tiepolo, whose figures expressed energy
and movement through twisting torsos and extended limbs. During the 1880s, he used a black line with the primary
colors (red, yellow, and blue). The beautiful young women he created, dubbed Chérettes by an admiring public, were
archetypes—not only for the idealized presentation of women in mass media but for a generation of French women
who used their dress and apparent lifestyle as inspiration as they became the new role models (Figs. 11-8 through 11-11).
Eugène Grasset (1841–1917), page 201, Swiss-born illustrator/designer who was first to rival Jules Chéret in public
popularity. He had studied medieval art intensely, and this influence, mingled with a love of exotic oriental art, was
reflected strongly in his designs for furniture, stained glass, textiles, and books. His 1883 publication of Histoire des
quatre fils Aymon (History of Four Young Men of Aymon) was a bellwether achievement, both in graphic design and
printing technology. His design is important for its total integration of illustrations, format, and typography. His design
ideas were rapidly assimilated after publication, including the decorative borders framing the contents, the integration
of illustration and text into a unit, and the design of illustrations so that typography was printed over skies and other
areas. Spatial segmentation was used as an expressive component in page layouts. His “coloring-book style” of thick
black contour drawing locking forms into flat areas of color was in a manner similar to medieval stained-glass windows
(Figs. 11-12 through 11-14 and 11-33).
Eugene Rimmel, page 201, a philanthropist and perfume manufacturer who became a friend and patron of Jules Chéret.
In 1866 Rimmel financed a state-of-the-art printing firm in Paris for Chéret.
Charles Gillot, page 205, a collaborator with Eugène Grasset on Histoire des quatre fils Aymon (History of Four Young
Men of Aymon). It was printed in an aquatint-grain/color-photo relief process from plates made by Charles Gillot, who
transformed Grasset’s line-and-watercolor designs into subtle, full-color printed book illustrations
Aubrey Beardsley (1872–1898), page 205, the enfant terrible of art nouveau, he made use of a striking pen line, vibrant
black-and-white work, and shockingly exotic imagery. A strange cult figure, he was intensely prolific for only five years
and died of tuberculosis at age twenty-six. He became famous at age twenty, when his illustrations for a new edition
of Malory’s Morte d’Arthur (Figs. 11-17 through 11-19) began to appear in monthly installments, augmenting a strong
Kelmscott influence with strange and imaginative distortions of the human figure and powerful black shapes. “The
black spot” was the name given to compositions based on a dominant black form. He was named art editor for The

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Yellow Book, a magazine whose bright yellow cover on London newsstands became a symbol for the new and outrageous.
During the last two years of his life, Beardsley was an invalid. When he could work, the flat patterns and dynamic
curves of art nouveau yielded to a more naturalistic tonal quality, and dotted contours softened the decisive line of his
earlier work.
Walter Crane (1845–1915), page 207, an early innovator in the application of Japanese ornamental patterns and Eastern
interpretations of nature to the design of surface pattern. His work was included in early issues of The Studio.
Charles Ricketts (1863–1937), page 207, Beardsley’s leading rival among English graphic designers working in the wake
of the Arts and Crafts movement and on the crest of art nouveau. Ricketts began as a wood engraver and received training
as a compositor; therefore, his work was based on a thorough understanding of print production. He approached
the book as a total entity, focusing on a harmony of the parts: binding, end sheets, title page, typography, ornaments,
and illustrations (which were frequently commissioned from lifelong collaborator and close friend Charles Shannon).
His page layouts are lighter, his ornaments and bindings more open and geometric (Figs. 11-22 through 11-24), and his
designs have a more vivid luminosity than the Kelmscott style.
Georges Auriol (1863–1939), page 209, a collaborator with Alphonse Mucha, he designed furniture, carpets, stainedglass
windows, and manufactured objects. His pattern books, including Combinaisons ornementales (Ornamental
Combinations) (Fig. 11-39), helped spread art nouveau.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901), page 209, Primarily a printmaker, draftsman, and painter, Toulouse-Lautrec produced
only thirty-one posters (Figs. 11-25 through 11-29) (the commissions for which were negotiated in the cabarets in
the evenings) and a modest number of music- and book-jacket designs. Drawing directly on the lithographic stone, he
often worked from memory with no sketches and used an old toothbrush that he always carried to achieve tonal effects
through a splatter technique. He used simplified symbolic shapes and dynamic spatial relationships to form expressive
and communicative images.
Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen (1859–1923), page 209, a prolific illustrator during the 1880s and 1890s, his radical political
views, socialist affiliations, and anticlerical stance led him toward asocial realism, depicting poverty, exploitation,
and the working class. His vast oeuvre included over two thousand magazine covers and interior illustrations, nearly
two hundred sheet-music covers, over one hundred book illustration assignments, and three dozen large posters. A
friend and sometime rival of Toulouse-Lautrec (Figs. 11-30 through 11-32).
Alphonse Mucha (1860–1939), page 211, From 1895 until 1900, art nouveau found its most comprehensive statement in
Mucha’s work. His dominant theme was a central female figure surrounded by stylized forms derived from plants and
flowers, Moravian folk art, Byzantine mosaics, and even magic and the occult. So pervasive was his work that by 1900,
le style Mucha was often used interchangeably with l’art nouveau. His stylized hair patterns (Figs. 11-34 through 11-38)
became a hallmark of the era in spite of detractors, who dismissed this aspect of his work as “noodles and spaghetti.”
In addition to graphics, Mucha designed furniture, carpets, stained-glass windows, and manufactured objects.
Sarah Bernhardt (1844–1923), page 213, the most popular actress of the late 1800s, and subject of many posters by
Alphonse Mucha, Jules Chéret, Emmanuel Orazi, and Eugène Grasset.
Emmanuel Orazi (1860–1934), page 213, came to prominence as a poster designer in 1884, when he designed a poster
for Sarah Bernhardt; it was not until his static style yielded to the influences of Eugène Grasset and Alphonse Mucha a
decade later that he produced his best work.
Louis Rhead (1857–1926), page 214, British born, he moved to America in 1883 where he became one of the two major
American practitioners of art nouveau–inspired graphic design and illustration. While Rhead embraced Eugène Grasset’s
willowy maidens, contour lines, and flat color, he rejected his pale colors in favor of vibrantly unexpected combinations,
such as red contour lines on bright blue hair before an intense green sky. Rhead’s eclectic style sometimes mixed
a profusion of influences. Decorative embellishments from Victorian designs, forms inspired by the Arts and Crafts
movement, and curving, abstract linear patterns were sometimes combined in his designs.
William H. Bradley (1868–1962), page 214, trained as a newspaper apprentice, engraver, and type designer, he also
taught himself about art and design through magazines and library books. By 1890 his Arts and Crafts–inspired pen-

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and-ink illustrations were bringing regular commissions. He was influenced by Aubrey Beardsley’s flat shapes and
stylized contour. Beginning in 1894, Bradley’s work for the Inland Printer and the Chap Book (Figs. 11-44 through 11-46)
ignited art nouveau in America. He made innovative use of photomechanical techniques to produce repeated, overlapping,
and reversed images. Bradley was inventive in his approach to typographic design and flouted all the prevailing
rules and conventions. Type became a design element to be squeezed into a narrow column or letter spaced so that lines
of many and few letters all became the same length and formed a rectangle.
Ethel Reed (b. 1876), page 217, the first American woman to achieve national prominence as a graphic designer and illustrator
(Fig. 11-53). Born and raised in Massachusetts, she became well known as a book illustrator and poster designer
at age eighteen. For four brief years (1894–1998) she created posters and illustrations for Boston publishers Copeland
& Day, and Lamson, Wolffe and Company. Reed’s career ended abruptly after she traveled to England and produced
her last poster in London in 1898. Her disappearance from the historical record at age twenty-two remains a mystery.
Edward Penfield (1866–1925), page 218, an art director for Harper and Brothers publications from 1891 until 1901, his
monthly series of posters for Harper’s magazine from 1893 until 1898 were directed toward the affluent members of
society, frequently depicting them reading or carrying an issue of the magazine. In 1894, Penfield evolved toward his
mature style of contour drawing with flat planes of color. By eliminating the background, he forced the viewer to focus
on the figure and lettering. Penfield drew with a vigorous, fluid line, and his flat color planes were often supplemented
by a masterly stipple technique (Figs. 11-54 through 11-56).
William Carqueville (1871–1946), page 218, created posters similar to Penfield’s Harper’s work for Lippincott’s magazine,
including one for the July 1895 issue featuring a girl dropping her Lippincott’s after a young boy startles her with a
firecracker (Fig. 11-57).
Maxfield Parrish (1870–1966), page 218, expressed a romantic and idealized view of the world (Fig. 11-58) in book,
magazine, and advertising illustrations during the first three decades of the twentieth century, before turning to painting
landscapes for reproduction.
Henri Clemens van de Velde (1863–1957), page 213, Interiors, book design, bookbinding, jewelry, and metalwork were
his major activities. In 1892 he wrote an important essay, “Déblaiement d’art,” calling for a new art that would be contemporary
in concept and form but possess the vitality and ethical integrity of the great decorative and applied arts of
the past. In book design he broke creative ground, drawing dynamic linear forms that embrace their surrounding space
and the intervals between them. His work evolved from forms inspired by symbols and plant motifs to rhythmic linear
patterns (Figs. 11-60 through 11-62).
Privat Livemont (1861–1936), page 222, a native of Belgium, this teacher and painter produced nearly three dozen posters
strongly inspired by Mucha’s idealized women, their tendrilous hair, and their lavish ornament. His major innovation
was a double contour separating the figure from the background. A dark contour was outlined by a thick, white band,
which increased the image’s impact when posted on billboards (Fig. 11-64).
Gisbert Combaz (1869–1941), page 222, an artist and art historian specializing in the Far East, he was a leading member
of La Libre Esthetique, the organization that evolved from the Cercle des XX in 1893. His many exhibition posters for this
group feature intense color and pushed the art nouveau arabesque into an almost mechanical, tense line (Fig. 11-65).
Chris Lebeau, page 224, produced some of the most striking and complex designs in batik and was successful in assimilating
traditional patterns and colors of the East Indies into his own work. He was commissioned to design the binding
for De stille kracht (The Quiet Power) by the publisher Lambertus Jacobus Veen, the most heavily East Indian of all the
novels by The Hague writer Louis Couperus (Fig. 11-67).
Jan Toorop (1858–1928), page 224, Born on the Dutch East Indies island of Java, Javanese culture was a natural source
of his inspiration. His use of the silhouette, his linear style, and the forms, expressions, and hairstyles of his female
figures are derived from Javanese wajan shadow puppets. This Javanese influence is clear in his 1895 poster for Delftsche
Slaolie (Delft Salad Oil). His 1898 binding for Psyche shows his skill in combining text with illustration. The design
is filled with his “whiplash” lines, and the lettering, especially on the spine, blends in with the illustration (Figs. 11-68
and 11-69).

A HISTORY OF
GRAPHIC DESIGN
S. H. de Roos, page 224, Dutch nieuwe kunst graphic designer whose decorative ornaments are derived predominantly
from geometry. His 1902 book cover design for De vrouwen kwestie, haar historische ontwikkeling en haar economische
kant (The Woman Question, Her Historical Development and Her Economical Side) by Lily Braun is an outstanding example
of his work (Fig. 11-70).
Hans Christiansen (1866–1945), page 226, A leading artist associated with Jugend, his simple, sans-serif letterforms are
drawn in constrained, pale colors on the October 1899 cover. The stylized curves of the letterforms echo the curves of
the illustration’s flat shapes and the necks of the swans (Figs. 11-72 and 11-74).
Peter Behrens (1868–1940), page 226, His abstract designs were inspired by ancient Egyptian artifacts and stylized floral
designs. He also became widely known for large, multicolored woodblock prints inspired by French art nouveau and the
Japanese print. In addition to his work for Jugend, he experimented with ornaments and vignettes of abstract design
in two other publications, Der Bunte Vogel and Die Insel. He became artistic advisor to Die Insel and its publisher, Insel-
Verlag, for which he designed one of the finest Jugendstil trademarks (Figs. 11-73, 11-75 and 11-78).
Otto Eckmann (1865–1902), page 226, In addition to five cover illustrations and numerous decorative borders for Jugend,
he designed jewelry, objects, furniture, women’s fashions, and an important typeface called Eckmannschrift. He
became a designer and consultant for the Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft (General Electric Company), or AEG, and
explored the application of Jugendstil ornament to the graphic and product needs of industry (Figs. 11-76 and 11-77).
Adolfo Hohenstein (1854–1928), page 228, although German born, he is seen as the father of poster design in Italy (Fig.
11-79).
Leopoldo Metlicovitz (1868–1944), page 228, considered to be among the best poster artists in Italy at the turn of the
twentieth century, he worked under Adolfo Hohenstein at the Milan firm Giulio Ricordi. His classic 1913 Calzaturificio di
Varese poster exudes an optimistic elegance. (Figs. 11-80 and 11-81).
Giovanni Mataloni (1869–1944), page 228, considered to be among the best poster artists in Italy at the turn of the twentieth
century, he worked under Adolfo Hohenstein at the Milan firm Giulio Ricordi (Fig. 11-82).
Marcello Dudovich (1878–1962), page 228, an eclectic designer who eventually arrived at a unique colorful style. Like
Ludwig Hohlwein in Germany, he preferred elegant subjects presented in flat areas of color. He was a popular designer
for the fashionable Mele department store in Naples, Italy, which commissioned over 120 posters from the Milan firm
Giulio Ricordi (Fig. 11-83).
Franz Laskoff (1869–1918), page 228, a Polish-born poster artist who, along with Marcello Dudovich, was a popular
designer for the fashionable Mele department store in Naples, Italy, an important client of the Milan firm Giulio Ricordi
(Fig. 11-84).
Leonetto Capiello (1875–1942), page 228, a poster artist who, along with Marcello Dudovich, was a popular designer
for the fashionable Mele department store in Naples, Italy, and important client of the Milan firm Giulio Ricordi (Figs.
11-85 and 11-86).