Thursday, July 15, 2010

Summertime sartorial style ca. 1895

Paul Gauguin playing the harmonium in Art Nouveau artist Alphonse Mucha's studio in Paris, 1895. Mucha befriended Gauguin when he was broke, after returning from his first trip to Tahiti, and offered him space in his studio where the two worked on their art, each in their own corner. That is what friends are for!

What fun times this must have been for them both! I love this idea of the two of them with such different styles, working in the same space. I can imagine the conversations. I bet they had endless quantities of champagne on hand from one of Mucha's most known commercial works, seen below.

And then it seems they indeed had some things in common. A very young girlfriend. And who did design that Medée poster? Hmm... Scandals and lover's quarrels in the art world are certainly nothing new.

I have so much to do right now, and I should be sleeping like "normal" people, but here I am writing about a time that would have been a dream for me to live in. I should actually be dreaming.....

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